, which would value the combined groups at 15 billion pounds including debt. A merger of Vodafone’s domestic unit with Three UK, the Hong Kong conglomerate’s British business, would shrink the number of mobile operators to three from four.
The logic seems clear. Mobile operators throughout Europe have long lamented antitrust authorities’ preference for keeping at least four players in a market to ensure price competition. The telcos are investing billions in 5G networks and other future technologies, and argue that the money must come from somewhere. Cost-saving deals would help.
Yet Vodafone’s case would be easier to defend if UK operators hadn’t hiked their tariffs in unison by about 11% last spring, a move they seem likely to repeat again this year. And it’s hard to see how the parties could assuage the Competition and Markets Authority by offering to sell assets, since the antitrust problem would presumably be in the core units serving retail customers.