Read more.Earlier this week we heard BT was interested in buying back O2.
Read more.Earlier this week we heard BT was interested in buying back O2.
Oh no - AT&T or BT getting involved in mobile would be bad news for customers. BT are always overpriced and AT&T are famous for locking down phones in the US so they can't be used on other networks. Competition for mobile contracts is bad and getting worse at the moment* - these sort of acquisitions will only make it worse....
(For example - I use to in the past get a phone with 2 year contract for roughly the value of the phone (spread over 2 years) - These sort of deals don't exist anymore - Its usually a £10 extra)
Was more surprised they sold the mobile side tbh. Everyone knew how big it was going to be in the future...
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
Apparently it's a strategic move as they think most of their market want combined fixed line, mobile, TV and broadband packages from one supplier. As such BT needs a mobile business to shackle to the rest of its retail offering. It may actually increase competition in the marketplace and lead to lower price profiles.
Can't say that I'm part of that market profile, though - never too keen to put all my eggs in one basket!
If BT manage to grab one of them you can be sure that Sky will try to get the other for parity as Virgin & TalkTalk both have quad play packages already.
Definitely agree that having Aggravation, Trouble & Torment would be a bad idea for the UK market - the big US players would probably try the same setup as the States which just wouldn't work. Although, IS AT&T actually looking to get into the UK market? If so, then I'd kind of argue that they would make a better match for EE than BT.
Don't agree however that mobile contract competition is bad at the moment. For bundled contracts (service+mobile) you're undoubted correct, with prices going up and deal terms getting worse (at least at EE they are!). However, if you're looking at SIM-only deals then it's still pretty cut-throat. A wee while ago I moved from a Virgin "unlimited everything" 3G deal to a Three "all-you-can-eat" data package on 4G and it only cost me £3 extra/month, and that's a reasonable deal in my book considering Three offer EU/US data roaming and tethering.
Also going to agree wholeheartedly with the article author - definitely makes more sense for BT to pick up O2, (or rather should that be "recover O2"?) rather than looking at EE. From what I'm hearing the merger of T-Mo and Orange to form EE did them no favours at all, and they don't exactly have a stellar reputation for either customer service nor consistency of network.
Actually the latter is one of the drivers why I left Virgin (EE MVNO), Three is a lot more consistent in it's data rates.
Ofsted better put a stop to this.
We cannot have just 2 or 3 players in the mobile market. EE & BT are known for poor customer service, joining them up together is going to be a nightmare.
Some good points - its interesting isn't it, it looks to me as if the bundle prices (handset + contract) are shooting up insanely fast, but sim free contracts are dropping like a stone.
A year ago I signed a sim only deal with EE for unlimited text/calls and 3gb of data/month, at £23/month-ish (straightforward renewal so there is 50% off for 6 months, but averages to £23).
Today I just signed another sim only deal with EE for unlimited text/calls and 5gb of data/month, at £15/months ish (same 50% off for 6 months deal).
Thats just insanely cheap. I guess it's a sign that they are no longer discounting handsets - it actually works out cheaper in many cases to go sim free and just buy your phone on a 0% credit card (or for cash!).
I do hope BT are not allowed to buy EE though - not that I can see EE wanting to sell up just yet anyway unless it was an astronomical offer. It can only be a bad thing for consumers and the industry. Especially given that we effectively only have 3 providers now as it is!
I'd have to disagree about sim only contracts dropping in price - certainly with Three anyway. A couple of years ago I got a £18/month rolling contract on the One Plan (AYCE data inc tethering, 2000 mins & 5000 3-3mins, 5000 texts). Now that Three are shifting people off the One Plan (where's the Hexus article about that btw?) the options are much bleaker - the replacement Sim-only plan with Three costs £28/month!
burble (27-11-2014),CAT-THE-FIFTH (27-11-2014)
I think BT were expecting mobile VoIP to take over from regular cell phones. Fusion (which was released a few years after they sold Cellnet) didn't seem to take off at all, possibly because the phone choices were limited to a couple of Motorola offerings.
So, BT will buy O2 and EE ?
Less competition will mean poor consumers like us will suffer
Despite the growth in that area, the price they got for selling o2 was an inflated one and they will only spend about half that to get either EE or o2, so it looks like they made a smart move.
They are obviously only going to buy one of them, they are simply keeping their options open to increase the chance of a deal happening.
I guess it depends on what you want from a contract. I've only ever wanted 500Mb and few minutes and 500 text. My last contract cost £480 over two years (£20 a month). I got a Note 1 included which was £450 to buy at the time. This time I gave up and went for a SIM only deal but still ended up paying £6.80 a month which while not expensive is still more than the £30 total extra I paid for the contract two years before... If I'd gone for a phone+Sim deal I couldn't find anything below £25 this time and the phones offered where far cheaper to buy outright....
If O2 & EE are up forsale, maybe they are not doing too well financially!
Too many cheap phone deals!
Remember O2 sold it's broadband network to Sky! First sign of desperation I think!
Telefonica got a bargain when it went round buying all the shares of O2 for £2/share from the share holders after the demerger of mobile phone business from BT creating new company O2!
O2 also came with 3G licenses which BT had paid £4.5Billion for!
BT did give the newly created O2 £1Billion dept part of it's original £30billion dept!
BT share price had previously fallen from £15/share to less than a £1
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