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Mergers and Acquistions News

Categories: Telecoms

March 2nd 2010, 17:52PM

The European Commission (EC) has cleared the proposed merger of telecoms firm Orange UK with T-Mobile UK, conditional upon a change to a network sharing agreement with rival 3G UK.

Existing competition issues that had caused concern were alleviated following a further investigation of the proposed consolidation.

The EC concluded that there remains sufficient competitors on the market, if plans to amend an existing agreement with 3G are fulfilled.

A request by the Office of Fair Trading to have the case reviewed by the UK competition authorities has also been withdrawn, with both parties agreeing to divestiture a quarter of combined spectrum in the 1800MHz band as part of the consolidation.

Commenting on the decision, European competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia said: "I am happy that we managed to resolve the competition issues in this case quickly in close cooperation with the Member State concerned."

Tim Hottges, chief finance officer at Deutsche Telekom, which owns T-Mobile, said: "This is excellent news for our customers, for our highly committed teams in the UK and for our shareholders."ADNFCR-1833-ID-19646586-ADNFCR

 

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