Be Excellent To Each Other

Just heard on the news.. Will be the biggest provider in the UK

Orabile?

Nice. Irn Bru vomit.

You know when you've been Toranged.

I knew this long ago. Didn't I mention it here? I'm almost sure I told Gaywood.

The future's blight, the future's Orabile.

No. You mentioned the RAN sharing agreement which they nearly had, then abandoned. This is a full blown merger.

Don't they share a network anyway? Or they're both on 1800 at least?

No. And no. They both started on 1800Mhz when they launched their GSM networks, but that quickly changed as they bought spot licences in other frequencies (and indeed, Vodafone and Cellnet/O2 have patches in the 1800-1900 Mhz band too). And UMTS is 2400Mhz for all opertors, of course.

They were working on an agreement to share infrastructure, but the contract work and liability stuff was too complex and it nixed the deal. O2 and Vodafone were working on a similar agreement; that might acquire some urgency now, as the new Orabile will have considerable economies of scale.

Torange.

When is this likely to happen? Could be a good time to grab cheap Tmobile contracts then reap the benefits of decent Orange coverage.

They say the formal announcement will be today, then I imagine they'll have to get it ratified by shareholders, then a merger on this scale will take... dunno. A year?

It'll be interesting what they do with the brands. Will they try and keep both brand names (maybe taking one upmarket and one downmarket?) or will they abandon one trademark -- and if so, which one?

T-Mobile were going to join up with somebody - and it's their chunk of the spectrum that's of real value. I'm suprised it was Orange and not Voda that got it, although Voda would probably have had a big arse fight with the regulators if they'd tried (given that they already run all the Virgin stuff).

t-mobile and orange joined in the netherlands two years ago, at the ti me we had 5 networks (and numerous resellers selling those networks on their own brand), just to big for our country. The orange customers were not happy in the end, because there were some spots not covered by t-mobile, orange was switched off, and people had gone to orange specifically some years before because they promised those areas covered, and t-mobile didn't let them out of their contract easily, but in the end did..

I thought Virgin piggy-backed off One-2-One when it first launched? Isn't that now T-Mobile?

Yes. I'm talking pish.

one2one is o2 isn;t it?

No, myp's right*. One2One became T-mobile.



Eugh. Now my teeth are itching.

O2 is BT Cellnet.

Sucking off too many Malaysian ladyboys?

No. One2one became T-Mobile when it was sold to Deutsche Telecom. Cellnet became BTCellnet and then O2 when it was bought by Telefonica (Italy's nationalised telecom). Vodafone has remained it's own company. Orange kept the Orange brand, although ownership passed from the Hutchinson brothers (who still own some of the worldwide Orange companies) to France Telecom - similar to how Virgin Records still uses consistent Virgin branding even though Branson doesn't control the company any more.

DT ran it as One2One for 3 years before renaming it.

Well, I meant originally, and you know I don't hold with this newfangled 3G stuff

Oh, I didn't know it was that long. I thought it was within a year or so. Fair enough.

Is vodafone still vodafone? My dad had an analogue voda carphone for years and years, up until they started switching off the analogue cells in scotland, making the coverage as bad as the new GSM system.
We jumped to Orange then and stuck with it.

Same commercial entity, yes. Vodafone buy other people, rather than being bought and sold themselves.

Incidentally, I think that not only is this a positive move, but we'll probably see two other operators merge in the next few years. The original regulatory vision for cellular comms in the UK was two network operators (Cellnet and Vodafone) running two overlapping networks, who would then sell access to a service provider [1], who would then sell contracts to customers. This is because it was deemed too expensive for every operator to run their own entire network. No-one saw the massive bubble economy that cell comms would go through in the late 90s and early aughts, which made it (briefly) feasible to run five entire networks but those days are gone now.

[1]Early contract customers who, say, bought a "Vodafone" contract from Singlepoint at Phones4u then tried to do an upgrade at Carphone Warehouse (who wouldn't deal with Singlepoint) will know this caused some pain and suffering.

My old man was on Vodafone for 20 years before he switched earlier this year.
I can't remember the name of the phone he had, but it had a carrying handle, detachable receiver (just like a house phone) and an extendible aerial

He's still go it in a drawer in his office

Oh, oh. 'Tangerine'

Holy crap. Vodafone launched on 1st January 1985, and they were tiny for several years after that, so his customer reference number must have had less than four digits!

WINNAR.

I don't think he ever knew it - he went via a reseller.

You had no choice back then, as I mentioned above. Vodafone were forbidden by their licence terms from selling contracts direct to the public until sometime in the late 90s -- well after the launch of one2one and Orange, who weren't bound by the same rules.

Vodafone have been trying to stick a mast up outside Charl's parents' house. They claimed that a 30m tall mast, with associated ground-level gubbins, would have zero visible impact on the area. Despite the area being that small piece of flat, E-shaped open land with public access on all sides on the corner there (NE of Whitefield, SE of Glover's Brow).

I mean, I know Kirkby's not the prettiest, but that's taking the pish.

It's the first time the shitty gas box (in the same place, oddly invisible from the air) has come in useful, with the council planner handling the appeal saying that's already enough of a blight, thank-you.

Now they've successfully blocked it, I'm trying to convince them they should let Voda install it in one their enormous, tree-filled gardens where it would be invisible, and would earn them plenty of land- and access- revenue (Voda also claimed that, naturally, no other local site can give the level of coverage they so desperately need).

Flipside to Bik's story: Vodafone were retiring the mast in (IIRC) Portskewitt as the site was unsafe or something. They applied for planning permission in some spot or other for a new mast (MyFinger's brother was involved in the planning process, which is how I know this). The application was denied after a discussion that lasted approximately 60 seconds by the local council. Vodafone shrugged and turned the old mast off anyway. A few dozen residents suddenly found themselves locked into 12 or 18 month Vodafone contracts with no coverage within miles of their home. They asked to be let out of the contracts and Vodofone said no.

Good. Serves the fucking idiots right.

They want phones but not the masts... how do they think mobile phones work... magic?

Yes, pretty much. This was at the height of the "mobile phone masts cause cancer" scares.

Why isn't mobile coverage provided by unmanned, wind-and-solar-powered dirigibles yet, anyway?

That's almost as practical as my really long extension lead idea.

Everything causes cancer according to the Mail and other rags..

I saw in Holland, many mobile phone sites have fairly large 2-blade wind turbines on them. Great idea.

I assume we don't have that here for the same reason Grim... cited above.

Maybe if they could somehow combine the two...

People are fucking idiots?

Yep.

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_15791/content ... d=gbDTGRpV

Interesting that Vodafone shares are up -- I think Groocock is right though. Also: "generate synergies" == "make people redundant". And a lot of people by the sound of it.

Poop sticks.

I wanted O2 and T-Mobile to merge because T-Mobile have the only 3G transmitter round here.

I love my iPhone like my own child (even though it sometimes needs a slap), but having to put up with rubbish GPRS is annoying.

Does this mean I will get Android on Orange...cool!!

So with teh merger we should get both

We have both already.