Vodafone to buy T-Mobile?
By Jennifer Scott,
Vodafone is rumoured to be looking at buying T-Mobile in a move that would leave it with a 40 per cent share of the mobile market.
A report published today in the Financial Times suggests the move, citing sources close to the activity.
The estimated value of T-Mobile is between £2.5 billion and £3.4 billion however, obtaining it would lead to a large rise in market share for Vodafone, meaning regulators could well stop the deal before it goes through.
T-Mobile has struggled recently, reporting poor quarterly results. German parent Deutsche Telekom has also appointed JPMorgan to help it assess its options and move the company forward.
IT PRO contacted Vodafone but it did not respond to our request for comment at the time of publication.
The company also made no official comment to the FT but the paper reported: “people familiar with the situation said the company was examining the merits of making an offer for T-Mobile UK, or setting up a joint venture.”
IT PRO also contacted T-Mobile but it declined to comment.
At present, Vodafone’s market share stands at 25 per cent with O2 slightly ahead on 27 per cent.
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How interesting, and unexpected...
What an interesting scenario, especially as T-Mobile is rapidly becoming much like Vodafone - great network, but questionable Value for Money It would be interesting to see what Ofcom say about this proposal, but personally I don't think it'll get past the first stage - the companies are in direct competition with each other and are almost carbon copies of each other (each has rougly the same range of phones, very similar tariffs, roughly the same reputation for network quality and customer service) I still believe a T-Mobile-3 deal would be much better. Both networks are struggling, but both could do so much for each other. 3 has the good value deals but falls down in network quality and customer service - whereas t-mobile have excellent customer service, generally good network quality but questionably good value price plans. If the two were to merge together, they could make one hell of a network, and benefit from each others' brand values and reputations to make sure that both brands could be kept strong.
By andyrew on Tuesday Jun 30
mixed news
We're on t-mobile as they offered a great deal on handsets & calls & data but we made the big mistake of assuming they had some transmitters in Suffolk. We dont care if they get bought by BT (rumour 1) or 3 (rumour 2) or voda(expensive)phone (new rumour) just as long as we get some signal in places other than Ipswich town centre or the second floor in our office in Bury ST Edmunds or in the countryside.
By davidbradbury on Tuesday Jun 30