14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like mobile operator O2 wants to reopen talks with its rival, T-Mobile for sharing their UK networks in order to reduce the cost of bringing high-speed wireless broadband to consumers.
Both operators have been gaining customers throughout the last three months of last year and are already co-operating on the German market. This also follows the plans Vodafone and Orange have to share their 3G nationwide networks.
"We have to examine every opportunity to make sure we are as efficient as possible," explained Peter Erskine, O2 chief executive. According to him, the company had talked to T-Mobile over sharing masts a few years before but worries over the reglators' attitude to such a deal.
The deal would bring benefits to both mobile operators, but especially for O2 by helping the company to finally roll-out its 3G network, the smallest of the four holders of UK mobile licenses, currently reaching only 65 percent of the population having to surpass 80 percent by the end of this year.
O2 announced that it added 295,000 new customers in the last three months of 2006, which is 10 percent more than the operator added in the previous year. T-Mobile added 235,000 in the same period last year.
Several analysts pointed out that acquiring 3 would be an option for O2 to boost its network coverage. Erskine ruled out the idea saying that "We are certainly visiting network sharing but I certainly would not think it likely that we are going to buy 3, in fact I think it's definite that we're not".