Sky sidles up to O2, whispers: 'Fancy a little FOUR-PLAY?'

Re: Past Form

>Honestly, I'm surprised Sky didn't just counter-bid against Three.

I'm not!

Look at Ireland and Three's takeover of O2-IRE, specifically the EU competition decision and the requirement for network sharing. What the Sky deal almost certainly does is to make any competition review of the Three takeover of O2-UK a formality; something that could not be said if Sky were to directly approach O2-UK.

From a technical perspective it would also put Sky in a similar position to BT with respect to EE and the merger of Orange-UK with T-Mobile-UK, namely Sky will benefit from (and encourage) the merger of O2-UK and Three-UK into a single entity without directly incurring the costs and effort involved.

Re: Past Form

Because they didn't need to. They don't want to run a mobile network, they just want to offer a mobile service. Much cheaper to do an MVNO deal and it will achieve the same results for them. It also gives them a competitive edge as they don't have to manage the network like some other players.

Re: Past Form

As a newly returned O2 subscriber because Three didn't really work too well whilst I was at home, I can say that their network doesn't seem to be. Dropped calls, dud calls are a regular occurance around this area. At least with Three it was a poor signal issue but you knew what to expect. Here, O2 is up and down like a yo-yo. Plus, the voice quality on Three is noticably better, even when O2 is on 4G!