Philip Cullum, Deputy Chief Executive, Consumer Focus, said:
“We have serious reservations about the way this approval process has taken place. The potentially far-reaching implications of this deal for UK consumers should have been examined by UK regulators, as the Office of Fair Trading and consumer groups requested, not behind closed doors in Brussels.
This decision means that we still have a number of unanswered questions around the impact of the merger on competition. There remains a worrying lack of clarity around the deal struck by Orange and T-Mobile, particularly concerning the specific concessions that the two companies have made, as well as worries about the broader effects of cutting the number of UK mobile networks from five to four.”
