T-Mobile

T-Mobile and Orange have been making puppy dog eyes at each other for ages now so it should come as no surprise to anyone that it was announced today that the two mobile networks are to officially merge. A big engagement party with streamers and delicious cake and everything was thrown in honour of the union (note: we made this bit up).

According to the Times Online, the merger has now been approved by the European Commission and will see rival mobile network 3 doing rather well out of the bargain as well.

The union of T-Mobile and Orange in the UK would have seen the super-networks’ customer base swell to some 30 million customers, which would leapfrog current market leader O2 and potentially stifle competition in the market. In order to allay regulatory fears, the UK’s smallest network 3 will be able to access 3,000 more T-Mobile masts, giving it greater 3G coverage.

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Orange and T-Mobile are said to be merging their UK mobile operations which will see the two become the biggest mobile network and mobile broadband provider in the country. The merger will see the companies pooling their resources, meaning that we’ll hopefully see increased coverage, faster mobile broadband speeds and larger amounts of monthly usage.

According to the BBC, the deal is not due to take place until November, after which the two brands will remain separate for 18 months before merging under one banner. We’ll either see the names merging a la ‘Orange T-Mobile’ or one of the two brands being dropped.

If the latter is the case, our money is on Orange being the remaining brand name, due largely to their stronger brand presence. There’s Orange Wednesdays, Orange Rock Corps and of course, Orange Broadband.

Either that, or the new company will go with one of the following names:

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Following on from both BT and O2 announcing the rollout of their Wi-Fi services in every Starbucks coffee house in the UK and Ireland, T-Mobile have just confirmed that they have teamed up with Virgin Trains to unroll their HotSpot Wi-Fi service onto Virgin’s tilting Pendolino trains. Apparently, the mobile internet connections work everywhere on the rail network, even when a train passes through a tunnel.

This is great news for T-Mobile Mobile Broadband pay monthly customers who get unlimited HotSpot Wi-Fi bundled with their plans already. The service is also free to Virgin Trains customers who upgrade to First Class.

Non-T-Mobile and standard class customers however can sign up for access for an hour, which sets you back £5, or for a whole 24 hours, which costs £10.

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Vodafone and O2 have agreed on a deal which will see the two mobile operators merging their mobile networks, in order to improve mobile phone reception across the country, and, more importantly, improve the availability and quality of mobile broadband services.

Matthew Key, chief executive of O2 owners Telefonica Europe said: “This goes some way to ‘future proofing’ the network,” adding that “the current economic situation was a catalyst.”

The merging of the networks will see the operators saving hundreds of millions of pounds over the next few years, and could, in theory, lead to the eventual rollout of mobile broadband services comparable to fixed-line connections in terms of speed and reliability, in accordance with Lord Carter’s Digital Britain proposals.

This follows in the footsteps of a deal done in December 2007 between 3 and T-Mobile. The two operators share HSDPA networks and are starting to decommission masts, with T-Mobile already noticing savings, costs, freeing up money that can be invested.

In Spain, a joint venture between Vodafone and Orange saw the two providers able to bring much faster services to rural areas, by reducing the number of base stations needed, thereby reducing the cost of running and maintenance.

Virgin Media came out on top in a recent survey on mobile broadband products by independent consumer group Which? who tested each of the provider’s products to see if the much advertised plug and play aspect of mobile broadband set up really was as easy as that.

Providers were tested on usability, customer service, ease of set up, speed and connection, and how easy it was to cancel.

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T-Mobile has launched a docking station that will allow users to share their mobile broadband connection with anyone nearby.

The Mobile Broadband Share Dock, which was originally unveiled in October, is now available in the shops. The Share Dock enables several users at once to share a mobile broadband connection. The device is exclusive to T-Mobile and is available free to customers who sign up to a £20 a month 18 month mobile broadband contract.

The Share Dock could make an ideal back-up system for small businesses which rely on an unstable consumer level broadband connection. Much like an ordinary Wi-Fi router, the dock allows users to plug in a normal mobile broadband USB dongle, and uses password protection to prevent unauthorised access to the mobile broadband network from others who are in range.

Richard Warmsley, head of internet and entertainment at T-Mobile UK said, “Mobile broadband has experienced huge growth across the market.

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O2 have today revamped their mobile broadband packages, slashing the cost of their basic 18 month and rolling monthly plans, and introducing a new 24 Month 10GB plan designed for heavy users.

A new coverage checker has just been launched over at the O2 site, giving customers a realistic idea of the kind of service they can expect to get at home, at work, at college at the train station, or wherever they will be mostly making use of their mobile broadband.

According to O2 figures, 20% of customers are frustrated at not being able to use mobile broadband, despite coverage checkers telling them otherwise – this is why O2 have decided to roll with a new 50-day money-back guarantee – or ‘Happiness Guarantee’ as O2 are calling it – is also available to O2 mobile customers who have signed up for the product.

O2 are also keen to stress that they are the only mobile broadband provider in the UK to offer customers unlimited Wi-Fi access thanks to a deal struck with The Cloud – O2 Mobile Broadband customers can enjoy unlimited browsing via Wi-Fi at any of The Cloud’s 6,000+ hot spots in the UK.

This news comes just after T-Mobile’s mobile broadband offering was rated the fastest in the country in independent tests.

Independent tests have resulted in T-Mobile being ranked the provider with the fastest mobile broadband in the UK.

Testing company P3 solutions carried out the study, which looked into the performance of mobile broadband service providers. Tests assessed the level of customer satisfaction regarding broadband speeds during peak hours, and were carried out over the last three months across 16 cities in the UK.

T-Mobile Broadband was found to be the fastest provider for upload and download speeds as well as for web browsing and sending and receiving emails. Accessing websites was about 25% faster with T-Mobile than with its nearest rival, while uploading photos and videos to websites such as Facebook and YouTube was 60% faster than competitors’ upload speeds.

Emin Gurdenli, chief technology officer at T-Mobile UK, said: “These independent tests clearly put T-Mobile’s Mobile Broadband network ahead of the pack. P3’s benchmarking reveals that our programme of continuous improvement and investment in network performance is delivering a richer experience for our fast-growing base of Mobile Broadband users.”

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The Advertising Standards Agency has ruled that a T-Mobile advert which implies that mobile broadband offers the same quality as fixed-line services could mislead consumers.

A member of the public registered a complaint with the advertising watchdog after having received a flyer from T-Mobile that claimed its mobile broadband service offered “All the benefits of home broadband, on the move. No wires, no waiting, no worries.”

The ASA said the flyer may mislead consumers into thinking that mobile broadband would offer the same speed and reliability as a fixed-line connection, and that consumers would therefore view it as a suitable alternative. Whilst mobile broadband technology has come on leaps and bounds over recent months, it is still neither as reliable nor as fast as a typical home broadband connection.

T-Mobile argued that the leaflets referred to the capacities of mobile broadband, not its speed, and “maintained that they did not make any claim that implied a direct technical comparison to fixed-line broadband.”

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Mobile operators T-Mobile and 3 have signed a five-year agreement with BT to connect 7,500 of their base stations to BT’s high speed next-generation broadband network.

The deal was struck between BT Wholesale and Mobile Broadband Network Ltd (MBNL), a joint venture between 3 and T-Mobile. Mobile Broadband Network was established to provide 98% of the UK with access to high-speed HSDPA mobile broadband by 2010, thus making it the largest network in the country.

Mobile phone providers are being urged to increase their data transmission speeds as more and more users make wider use of mobile broadband. This need for speed has been highlighted as part of the five-year plan. Rival mobile operator Vodafone already signed a similar deal in April, with O2 following suit last May. Orange is now the only major mobile operator in the UK without such a deal.

As part of the agreement, BT will lighten the load of the network operators by carrying data from their mobile broadband services over the newly planned fibre optic network. This is known as backhaul. The deal will be worth several hundred million pounds - a large and welcome boost to BT’s business arm, which has suffered from a recent drop of revenues as companies such as Carphone Warehouse have stopped using its products.

The technology director at T-Mobile UK, Emin Gurdenli said: “This agreement with BT will make sure backhaul is not a constraint now or in the future at a time when T-Mobile is experiencing strong growth in mobile broadband and other mobile data services.”

The release of the Apple 3G iPhone, Google’s G1 and other smartphones such as the N96 are fuelling the current popularity of mobile broadband. As demand further increases, mobile providers will need to make sure that the networks they control can handle the increased volume of data traffic.

The managing director from BT Wholesale Markets, Brian Fitzpatrick said: “BT now supports the base station connectivity requirements of four of the five mobile players in the UK market, bringing our economies of scale to a hugely important element of the communications marketplace.”