Guest l3v5y Posted September 8, 2009 Report Share Posted September 8, 2009 As many have long suspected, France Telecom (who own Orange) are set to merge with T-Mobile UK. Branding will apparently remain the same for 18 months whilst everything is reviewed, but after anything could happen. Combined Orange and T-Mobile will have the largest share of UK customers of 37% (22% for Orange + 15% for T-Mobile) compared to 27% for O2 (currently the largest UK operator). How will this affect everyone, I wonder? As a T-Mobile customer currently and a potential Orange customer, this could be an interesting period... Via BBC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ratcom Posted September 8, 2009 Report Share Posted September 8, 2009 I really don't see this as good news. Why didn't Virgin try to grab T-bag I'll never know, has this would of been the best situation for us consumers. Now I can fully see that in a few years we could end up with 2 operators if (or when) Vodafone buy up O2UK to enable it to compete against such a large operator as Orange. Trust me think about it :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest andybarker Posted September 8, 2009 Report Share Posted September 8, 2009 Most important questions is... what will they be called? Orange? T-Mobile? T-Bag? Peach? Rupert? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Syphon Filter Posted September 8, 2009 Report Share Posted September 8, 2009 Yeah, I cant see this being a good thing. Firstly for us as consumers and secondly, how many people are going to lose their jobs as a result of this? I'm betting at least a couple of thousand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pisquee Posted September 8, 2009 Report Share Posted September 8, 2009 T'Orange Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mstephenson Posted September 8, 2009 Report Share Posted September 8, 2009 (edited) Most important questions is... what will they be called? Orange? T-Mobile? T-Bag? Peach? Rupert? Well for the first 18 months at least they're keeping the same, seperate names whilst they conduct a brand review but after that who knows? I don't see all of this as great news tbh. I was on Orange for a couple years (admittedly quite a while ago now) but they were truly awful, worst customer service ever and I had my fair share of other issues with them. Contrast that to T-Mobile, I've been with them for 3 or so years now and i've not had a single issue with them-ever. For my needs T-Mobile is pretty much perfect and can't be improved upon so can only see Orange making things worse - though i'd be more than happy to be proved wrong in time Edited to add Simon Atkinson (BBC Business reporter) seems to think Orange will be the name they go for. Edited September 8, 2009 by mstephenson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DarkWanderer Posted September 8, 2009 Report Share Posted September 8, 2009 Most important questions is... what will they be called? Orange? T-Mobile? T-Bag? Peach? Rupert? How about Tangerine? They could make their logo an orange (colour) letter T. What I'd like to know is how it'll affect pricing? Will Orange customers begin to get reasonably priced data like TMo customers, or (more likely) will TMo customers start getting charged Orange's extortionate data charges? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pete_thomson Posted September 8, 2009 Report Share Posted September 8, 2009 Well for the first 18 months at least they're keeping the same, seperate names whilst they conduct a brand review but after that who knows? I don't see all of this as great news tbh. I was on Orange for a couple years (admittedly quite a while ago now) but they were truly awful, worst customer service ever and I had my fair share of other issues with them. Contrast that to T-Mobile, I've been with them for 3 or so years now and i've not had a single issue with them-ever. For my needs T-Mobile is pretty much perfect and can't be improved upon so can only see Orange making things worse - though i'd be more than happy to be proved wrong in time Edited to add Simon Atkinson (BBC Business reporter) seems to think Orange will be the name they go for. If it all goes ahead (there are a few hurdles to clear first) then the new joint venture company will be created in Spring 2010. It'll take 18 months to then work towards merging Orange and T-Mobile into this new company. That's all I can say at the moment. As for jobs and such, then yes, surely jobs will go somewhere along the line. Whether this is a good thing or not I can't say. I've been customers of both T-Mobile and Orange, but I had no issues with either so I'm kinda lucky. I only leave T-Mo to go back to Orange as it was a slightly better deal overall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest argh Posted September 8, 2009 Report Share Posted September 8, 2009 Orange handsets with T-Mobile data plans would be good. Sadly, it's more likely that we'll get T-Mobile handsets and Orange data plans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dunbad Posted September 8, 2009 Report Share Posted September 8, 2009 Better 3g coverage maybe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tsutton Posted September 8, 2009 Report Share Posted September 8, 2009 Further discussion about this merge can be found here at Mobiholics, which is part of the MoDaCo.network - your existing MoDaCo login automagically works over there too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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