Orange and T-Mobile merge networks

[Jasmine]

Customers of Orange and T-Mobile will soon be able to hop between the two mobile networks.

The deal is one of the first practical benefits from the recent merger of the two firms, which have 30 million customers combined.

The network sharing deal is limited to 2G signals, meaning that customers will see little benefit when using the mobile web.

Analysts said that T-Mobile had the most to gain from the merger.

"Outside of the South-East [of England] there has been a constant perception that T-Mobile is an underperforming network," said Shaun Collins of research firm CCS Insight.

"This literally takes it away overnight."

He said that network coverage was becoming a "key battleground" between the major UK networks.

"The network coverage advantages of the merger [between Orange and T-Mobile] were always the most important part of it," he said.

Customers of the two firms will have to sign up for the free "roaming" service, which goes live on 5 October.

Once registered, their phone will automatically hop between the networks when it loses signal. The underlying system is similar to that used when a phone "roams" on a different network abroad.

Next year Everything Everywhere - the company that runs Orange and T-Mobile in the UK - said that phones would automatically switch to whichever of the two networks has the strongest signal mid-call.

It said it also plans to roll it out to 3G services.

When it does, Orange customers will be able to use a 3G network owned and operated by Mobile Broadband Network Limited (MBNL), a joint venture company owned by Three and T-Mobile.

Orange joined MBNL on the 16 August.

"Everything Everywhere will be adding Orange sites to the network it shares with Three in the course of time, and Three customers will get access to a significant proportion of those as they are added," said a spokesperson for Everything Everywhere.

Three customers are already able to use the Orange network for 2G calls and texts.

Further down the line, Everything Everywhere aims to start building a next-generation LTE (long-term evolution) mobile network, to cope with the surge in demand for data and the mobile web.

LTE offers faster speeds than current 3G networks and is able to handle more traffic.

The UK government plans to hold an auction of spectrum for next generation services in 2011.

this is a big deal for someone who has never experienced decent signal in her bedroom regardless of network provider. YES

[Gav]

This is pretty good (although to be honest, I'd rather T-Mobile have done a deal with O2 who have 99.9% 2G coverage - I have never been anywhere without at least GSM coverage from O2).

However, I wonder what Ofcom and the EU Commission will say about it in terms of it being anti-competitive.

[Katie]

cool! i wonder if rogers will merge with any networks.

[Vicky]

i recently moved from orange to vodafone regretting it now

[Katie]

so what is your guys' big networks over there? from what i understand, it's o2, orange and vodafone? just curious, here we have rogers, telus, bell, virgin mobile, fido and kodo. i think that's it.

[Gav]

so what is your guys' big networks over there? from what i understand, it's o2, orange and vodafone? just curious, here we have rogers, telus, bell, virgin mobile, fido and kodo. i think that's it.

We have five networks:

T-Mobile, Vodafone, O2 (Telefornica), Orange (France Telecom) and Three (Three is, by far, the smallest).

All the other 'networks' are MVNO which are Virtual operators using one of the aforesaid network's network.

[Mark]

I've been on orange, o2 and vodafone, and in my opinion vodafone have been the best.

Also, this deal is old news, I think Gav posted about it before.

[Katie]

OH lol you guys also have t-mobile?

i thought that orange was teaming up with t-mobile (usa) and i was like holy shit that's amazing, they can have coverage like everywhere now hahaa *facepalm*

[Justin]

lmao katie

*feels left out* well Katie, our networks are Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile, then there are a variety of smaller regional carriers like US Cellular and Metro PCS (not MVNOs). IIRC Verizon and AT&T each have about 90 million subscribers, then there's a sharp drop off to Sprint, then another sharp drop to T-Mobile.

[Gav]

OH lol you guys also have t-mobile?

i thought that orange was teaming up with t-mobile (usa) and i was like holy shit that's amazing, they can have coverage like everywhere now hahaa *facepalm*

Not quite. In fact, if I went to the USA and roamed onto T-Mobile, I'd still pay a ridiculously high price for calls/texts/data.

[Shox]

so what is your guys' big networks over there? from what i understand, it's o2, orange and vodafone? just curious, here we have rogers, telus, bell, virgin mobile, fido and kodo. i think that's it.

T-Mobile is mostly crap in the US anyways, so either way it wouldn't be good lol

[Danny]

I've been with One2One (that turned into T-Mobile), Vodafone, Virgin and O2.

I'd be more happy if Orange and O2 merged since O2 > All imo.

[Jasmine]

I've been with One2One (that turned into T-Mobile), Vodafone, Virgin and O2.

I'd be more happy if Orange and O2 merged since O2 > All imo.

lol i've only been with vodafone and t-mobile and i haven't really seen much of a difference so far, i still have shit signal in my bedroom. :'[ plus i want orange wednesdays, gimme orange wednesdays

[Danny]

I get orange wednesdays cos I got orange internet

i wish I didn't have orange internet, it's shit.

[Jasmine]

I get orange wednesdays cos I got orange internet

i wish I didn't have orange internet, it's shit.

omg bish i'm going cinema today, gimme your code

the internet on my phone is awwwwwwwesome, no complaints.

[Danny]

i'm on about broadband not mobile internet

[Jasmine]

ohhhhh! they do broadband?! did not know that. my broadband is remarkably shit, i just don't think this area is designed for internets or phones or anything like that.

and lol wut! are you serious!

[Danny]

yeah it went from Freeserve to wanadoo to orange.

and ye i am, so, take it, edit it out of your post, then i'll edit it out of mine

[Jasmine]

lol done! haha i cant believe you, thank you ever so much danny

[Danny]

I hope I didn't type it wrong.

[Jasmine]

looool i hope you didn't either! we'll see how it goes. ;P