06 September 2010 | Author: J. Morton News Editor

Mobile carriers Orange and T-Mobile to merge networks

With a combined customer base of 30 million users, Orange and T-Mobile began merger operations recently, and mobile subscribers of the two providers will soon benefit from combined 2G service areas between the two.

The company that owns Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, Everything Everywhere, also confirmed it will merge the two firms' 3G networks in the near future.

As T-Mobile's 3G network, Mobile Broadband Network Limited, is co-owned and operated with Three, Orange stands to benefit from improved access.

"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 the company.

For the 2G network, however, experts and analysts have noted that T-Mobile will be the bigger winner.

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

"This literally takes it away overnight," he added.

Members of either Orange or T-Mobile's 2G network will need to sign up for roaming service with their provider, which will be of free of charge and is set for launch in October.

Everything Everywhere has also announced that beginning in 2011, handsets will be able to automatically switch between networks mid-call in case one signal loses strength.

Post-merger, the two companies comprise the largest mobile company in the UK, though the brand names will remain distinctive.

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