News

The merger, which was first announced in June 2022, was finally approved earlier this year 

According to a report from Spanish business newspaper El Economista, Spanish operators Orange and MasMovil are set to name their newly consolidated business ‘MasOrange’. 

Both Orange Spain and MásMóvil have declined to comment on the name’s revelation, with the Spanish paper’s sources claiming that an official unveiling of the new branding will come after Easter. 

The merger of Orange Spain and MasMovil, worth €18.6 billion, was approved by the European Commission (EC) in February this year, following a lengthy investigation by regulatory bodies.  

This investigation sought to overcome concerns that the transaction would restrict market competition by creating the largest operator in Spain (in terms of customers) and reducing the number of players in the market from four to three.  

The newly combined MasOrange will serve over 30 million mobile subscribers and  almost 8 million fixed broadband customers. 

In order to counterbalance the newly merged company’s dominant market position, the EC required MasMovil to divest of 60MHz spectrum assets to local operator Digi, as well as providing the latter with a new roaming agreement. This, the regulators suggest, should allow Digi to grow rapidly to become a new fourth national operator in the Spanish market. 

The deal’s approval marked a notable shift in regulatory attitude within Europe, a fact that Kester Mann, Director of Consumer and Connectivity at CCS Insight, suggests will now turn the spotlight on the Vodafone and Three mrgeer in the UK. Just this week, a second phase of an investigation by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) was confirmed, after an initial investigation found unresolved competition concerns. 

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom newsletter 

Also in the news:
BT wins £26m contract to connect UK schools
Apple fined €1.8bn by European Commission over Spotify row
Japan to reduce regulatory pressure on incumbent NTT

Interview

At this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), we caught up with Stefan Pongratz, Vice President of Dell’Oro Group, to discuss the state of 5G in 2024 and what the future of the technology holds for us in 2024

It has been almost half a decade since the global telecoms industry first began its transition to 5G and, while rollouts have proved broadly successful, the technology has so far delivered little in the way of revenue growth for operators.

“So far with 5G, results have been mixed,” explained Pongratz. “On the one hand, coverage has been pretty good – some estimates suggest its 45% of the global population, so we’re developing significantly faster than LTE. […] From a capacity perspective as well, when you look at the proliferation of Massive MIMO in the upper midband, we’ve seen a stepwise reduction in data delivery costs of 50-70% cost per bit, so from that perspective its very good. But, on the other hand, 5G has not reversed the operators’ flat revenue trajectory so far.”

Now, with 5G’s evolution towards 5G-Advanced, questions are being asked as to whether this new flavour of 5G will be able to reverse the operators’ fortunes.

For Pongratz, beyond simply helping to meet the rising mobile data demand, 5G-Advanced could offer the operators many opportunities for service differentiation.

“The operators don’t need to rush things too much […] They can approach [5G-Advanced deployment] methodically, in line with their overall 5G roadmap,” he explained, saying that there are numerous scenarios in which 5G-Advanced will be a welcome upgrade, particularly when it comes to improving indoor coverage.

“There’s still a lot of areas out there where [5G] performance is not excellent, both outdoors and especially indoors. I think there’s a lot of opportunities for the operators to differentiate themselves here,” he explained. “One of the things we thought we’d see transpire with 5G was that the gap between indoors and outdoor coverage would actually be significantly reduced. We’ve seen that happening in China, but outside of that it has been limited. A stronger indoor emphasis in the 5G-Advanced era could be an opportunity for operators to move beyond human-based MBB applications.”

5G-Advanced in combination with AI and automation can spur improved efficiencies and ultimately help the operators reduce the TCO.

“Operators that can invest in building a more intelligent and automated network could have an advantage,” said Pongratz, describing it as a chance to ‘one-up’ their rivals.

“The ecosystem is in pretty good standing. With the standards being frozen in the first half of 2024, we will see some initial commercial deployments in 2024. These will most likely focus on capacity – as Huawei are calling it, 5.5G, will focus on the 10 Gbps capacity sites,” he explained. “We’ll see some initial uptake and then it will steadily improve throughout 2024 and beyond.”

You can view our full interview with Stefan Pongratz, VP of Dell’Oro Group, from the link below

Network builder and ISP 4th Utility, which is deploying a gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to UK homes and large residential buildings, has today published the results from a new survey of 2,000 people that found a “major” lack of understanding amongst consumers of crucial broadband terms. The “Great British Broadband Survey” found that only […]

Broadband ISP and mobile operator Virgin Media and O2 (VNO2) have today boosted their existing £400,000 Tech Lending Community (TLC) scheme alongside environmental charity Hubbub, which aims to provide hundreds of “second-hand” tablet computers and smartphones to help people in need get online across the UK. The Tech Lending Community scheme, which was first established […]

News 

The merger was agreed last year, with Vodafone taking a 52% in the new business and Three UK taking the remaining minority stake

This week, the UK competition and markets authority (CMA) have completed the first phase of its investigation into the merger which was put in place to identify whether the deal may lead to a ‘substantial lessening of competition’. 

The review, which began in January, concluded in short that the “CMA is concerned that combining these two businesses will reduce rivalry between mobile operators to win new customers.” 

The CMA have concluded that it has identified concerns significant enough to warrant further scrutiny in a Phase 2 investigation, in which an independent body will review the concerns raised in phase one in more depth. 

The high level of CMA intervention is necessary because, if the deal is given the greenlight, it will reduce the number of MNOs in the UK from four to three, with the newly merged company having a market share of 32.1%. Additionally, and perhaps rather obviously, the CMA found that “Vodafone UK and Three UK provide important alternatives for mobile customers”. 

Of particular concern to the CMA is the potential impact on smaller mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), such as Sky Mobile, Lebara, and Lyca Mobile. These operators rely on access to larger network infrastructures to provide services to their customers. The merger could potentially limit their ability to negotiate favourable deals with fewer network operators available to host their services. 

Both Three and Vodafone have made significant investments in their networks in recent years, including rolling out 5G. Unsurprisingly, both companies are emphasising that the merger will allow them jointly invest £11 billion in services and next generation wireless infrastructure.  

According to the CMA, Vodafone UK and Three UK have five working days to respond with meaningful solutions to the CMA, otherwise the deal will be referred to a more in-depth Phase 2 investigation. 

Keep up to date with the latest telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom daily newsletter 

Also in the news:
BT wins £26m contract to connect UK schools
Apple fined €1.8bn by European Commission over Spotify row
Japan to reduce regulatory pressure on incumbent NTT 

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