Everything Everywhere – Orange and T-Mobile take first steps together

Long awaited details are finally emerging about the controversial new mobile operator coming to the UK. As T-Mobile and Orange merge into a single joint-venture, we have at long last gotten a look at what kind of services subscribers can expect. And, of course, of the name of the new company: Everything Everywhere.

What’s this now?

French-owned Orange and German-owned T-Mobile have taken a long road to this merger (see our full report on their journey), but it has finally paid off – as Everything Everywhere will be the largest mobile network in the United Kingdom, with 30 million subscribers. Both Orange and T-Mobile will continue to run as separate brands (for the time being, at least), but  behind the scenes everyone involved in both companies will be working for Everything Everywhere (EE). And while the announcement today was full of the expect bombast and bluster, there was one services being announced today that shows EE is serious about combining its two audiences: Seamless roaming. Starting later this year, T-Mobile and Orange customers will be able to roam freely across each others networks with no additional costs. Termination fees will be dropped – it will, in effect, be just like staying on the same network.

Outside of that, EE provided us with a whole bunch of promises that it may or may not intend to keep. It promises that the scale of its new company will allow it to provide the best service at the best prices. It promises the future creation of a single “super-network” that all 30 million subscribers can share. It promises a unicorn for every household.

I may have made one of those up.

What we think?

Despite the fact that the name is incredibly lame (honestly, that should be a tagline rather than the actual title), this does look pretty good. Rather than just announce the name and nothing else, Everything Everywhere showed us a bit of leg with the “free roaming” announcement. It’s something for customers to be excited about the merger. Pretty much everything else announced here falls under the “I’ll believe it when I see it” category, because you have to bear in mind that operators are pathological liars.

And while Everything Everywhere has claimed it will be running the two brands separately, I wouldn’t be all that shocked to see the T-Mobile and Orange branding fading away over the next few years. After all, it’s got the subscribers. It’s got a single, new brand name. And soon enough it will have a consolidated “super-network” (unless it was making that up to get us excited). Why not have Everything Under One Roof?