Conditions accepted
The Orange T-Mobile 50/50 deal as discussed previously has been accepted by the European Commission, and the UK Office of Fair Trading has withdrawn its objections, Reuters report.
France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom can proceed with merging their UK operations, on condition of expanding the existing network sharing agreement T-Mobile has with 3. The combined company must also hand back a quarter of its assigned 1800 MHz radio spectrum. The paper should be signed in the Spring, followed by both brands running in parallel for up to 18 months.
FT and DT’s new business will be catapulted to a 37% market share, with the companies expecting to save around €4 billion through synergies and economies of scale, i.e. cuts.
Power to the people
After months of bargaining, legislation has been approved by a broad majority of the European parliament aimed at boosting the rights of mobile phone and internet users. The new laws give citizens greater protection against access restrictions.
Due to be implemented over the next 18 months, the reforms will enhance consumer rights, safeguard Internet freedom, protect data, boost competition and modernise radio spectrum use, according to parliamentary statements.
Under the new laws, service providers and authorities will have to demonstrate clear evidence of wrong-doing and illegal downloading to the judiciary before acting to terminate users connection for copyright infringement. A previous draft French anti-piracy law had suggested that Internet connections could be cut without judicial scrutiny, causing understandable uproar.
The moves are being seen as a victory for the smaller parties over the interests of the larger block votes. Christian Engstrom, MEP with the delightfully named Swedish Pirate Party said the new legislation "is far from perfect but it does represent a step in the right direction". He continued, "It sends a clear message to Nicolas Sarkozy, Peter Mandelson and others that draconian copyright enforcement measures will not be allowed to override Internet users’ fundamental rights in the EU".
Today I’m standing with the Pirates against the French.
The Orange T-Mobile 50/50 deal as discussed previously has been accepted by the European Commission, and the UK Office of Fair Trading has withdrawn its objections, Reuters report.