Rating: They’ve never taken our advice before, though
So. GoMo News was attending an excellent pre-Xmas event hosted by well-known Public Relations company, Hotwire. Naturally, we ran into a prominent UK mobile analyst who has refused to be identified but he does share a first name with us. Anyway, we got talking about the future of telecoms in the UK and concluded that Vodafone really does need to acquire BT, the UK’s entrenched fixed line Telco. It’s a natural fit for both but then telecoms companies have a long history of ignoring our advice.Let’s look at the synergies. Both are British based companies. In theory, therefore, there shouldn’t even remotely be any kind of cultural shock.
Better still, those within BT who still thought they were public servants (and acted accordingly) are now long gone.
Consequently, both sets of management should be able to understand each other completely.
GoMo News hasn’t even remotely researched where the duplication between the two companies might result in job losses, but we’d estimate there to be minimal areas of cross-over.
One is a world leading supplier of mobile telephony whilst the other offers a secure entry into the domestic broadband and fixed internet access market.
Let’s get this right. Vodafone already sells BT’s broadband and BT already sells Vodafone’s mobile network services. So they are already a perfect match.
There’s even a good precedent for this kind of merger in the UK with Virgin Media. One entity which can sell voice, broadband, mobile and television
Thanks to BT Vision, so could a combined Vodafone and BT. A perfect fit, we say.
One word makes that impossible “pensions”. BT’s pension liability is so gigantic that there is no way the company as a whole can be acquired by anyone. Who was it who said “BT is a pension fund, with a telco business attached” ?
Vodafone instead acquired Cable and Wireless Worldwide and is now BT’s largest competitor.
Vodafone no longer sells BT’s Broadband and sells Cable and Wireless and Thus services instead.
BT will once again revert to using O2′s network, some BT Business Mobile customers who recently joined are in fact roaming on O2.
O2 will be dumping Vodafone Cable and Wireless for its network backhaul within months and has contracted BT for this instead.
And finally the competition commision will stop an acquisition between BT and Vodafone instantly.
The integration between Vodafone and Cable and Wireless Worldwide is well underway and will be completed by the end of the year.
If anything BT should acquire Telefonica’s non spanish operations, Telefonica is out of its depth with its debts and would give BT a mobile network once again.