Telecoms.com – Ofcom boss again warns Europe against approving O2/3 deal
The weight of opinion among industry observers seems to be against White, however, with Northstream CEO Bengt Nordstrom wondering how Ofcom can adopt such contrasting positions on this and the BTEE deal.
“Ofcom’s approval of the BT/EE acquisition, but its objections to the O2/Three merger shows that diverged approach to regulation is being applied to an increasingly converged industry,” he said. “BT/EE is viewed as ‘different’ to O2/Three because of the technology involved. But consumers and the market don’t make the distinction between fixed and mobile. Only regulators still do. In a natural state, there would be two to three converged operators per country (plus a few niche operators) with the scale to compete with each other.”
