Three could buy O2 ireland?

whatbuttons?

Sorry, I should have been clearer there, when I said 'brand' I meant more like the website, shops possibly, those kind of assets. It would obviously be written into the deal that the O2 images and trademarks etc would remain the property of Telefonica, but as part of the deal the entire rest of the business could be sold leaving the buyer free to rebrand the whole lot with their own images, colours etc.
The point I was trying to make though was that with these things the primary item being sold isn't the shops or buildings - it's the customers, it's us.

And yep, I understand you're speculating - just saying that it's pointless to speculate about things that are almost certainly not going to happen - BT Ireland entering the mobile space being one of them.
Naturally I stand to be corrected on this, but I'd still be willing to bet on it

drunkmonkey

I'd say they won't buy o2 either, buying Metero/eMobile would be enough to make 3 bigger than o2 and that might be enough for them, buying o2 would be a bit like buying a falling knife.
I think they will do something though.

vicM

whatbuttons? wrote: »

I used to work in the telecoms industry so I can give a little insight here I think to help the discussion - first of all BT Ireland are more than likely not going to be entering the consumer mobile space any time soon. They certainly don't do this in the UK (the Irish company, though separate, is still owned by the UK company) and as one other person pointed out - since they've sold the Residential Landline business to Vodafone they are completely uninterested in any consumer business in Ireland and are focussing on providing the networks wholesale to other providers. If I had any life savings I would be totally comfortable betting the whole lot that BT Ireland will not be buying O2.



Secondly - knowing how these things go is paramount - if someone were to buy O2 what they are really buying is the customers - they get the brand as well but more than likely they won't want it. The customers and employees and assets of O2 would then be owned by whoever buys it, and the most likely thing to happen would be for the purchaser to immediately rebrand everything in their image and all their new customers would be immediately converted to one of their equivalent contracts.
If anyone was with BT Ireland when the business was sold (I know I was) then you'll remember what happened there - same thing.

I dont know why BT left the consumer market here but i would speculate they didnt want to invest much in the market. In the UK there is far stiffer competition in the landline/broadband landscape and it was a easy decision for them

whoever buys O2 will obviously get the customers, but customers can be very fickle if not attended to properly as O2 are finding out. I think the O2's main assest is actually the network in place and the brand name. As for employees, well it is an employers market atm.

jenno86

drunkmonkey wrote: »

I'd say they won't buy o2 either, buying Metero/eMobile would be enough to make 3 bigger than o2 and that might be enough for them, buying o2 would be a bit like buying a falling knife.
I think they will do something though.

Lot of Bill Pay and Business customers with o2. That would be appealing to 3 I'd imagine.

Meteor is more pre pay which is not as appealing.

whatbuttons?

vicM wrote: »

whoever buys O2 will obviously get the customers, but customers can be very fickle if not attended to properly as O2 are finding out.

Ah yes, but if 3 were to buy o2 and move all the customers onto equivalent price plans - that would mean that everyone with o2 now would suddenly be getting all you can eat data etc.. i'm with o2 now and i can tell you i'd be delighted with that!! nom nom data...

JTMan

I'm reliably informed that talks between Hutchison and Telefonica for Hutchison to acquire Telefonica Ireland are now at an "advanced stage".

If that is correct, and the talks materialise, Hutchison might be about to get their hands on O2, 48, Three and 50% of Tesco Mobile Ireland.

Bad news for competition.

Mycroft H

So what would O2 call themselves then? Ozone?

cookie1977

Not good for competition and in light of comreg's recent draft publication of their future plans, including fostering competition, it'll be interesting to see how they (comreg) do.
http://www.comreg.ie/publications/comreg_draft_strategy_statement_2012-2014.583.104084.p.html

Maybe the TCA will reject it?? We can dream

JTMan

Maybe the rejection of the AT&T/T-Mobile deal can give a ray of hope of the TCA apply similar mobile competition criteria. Although, I appreciate that it is a slightly different kettle of fish.

If Hutch announce a Telefonica acquisition, then it is time to organise mass consumer complaints to Comreg/TCA, about the loss in competition that a 48/3/O2/Tesco conglomeration would create.

cookie1977

Bit of a difference unfortunately as T-mobile and AT&T were the 3rd largest and largest networks in the US so there was a clear competition problem.

Hutchinso and O2 will say that the other networks are competitiors just buying space on the network so I can't see how TCA will block it if it does happen. I would have thought meteor to be a better target for hutch in light of eircom groups problems

vicM

Fungus wrote: »

I'm reliably informed that talks between Hutchison and Telefonica for Hutchison to acquire Telefonica Ireland are now at an "advanced stage".

If that is correct, and the talks materialise, Hutchison might be about to get their hands on O2, 48, Three and 50% of Tesco Mobile Ireland.

Bad news for competition.

bad indeed, but why would they own 50% of tesco, thought that Tesc was a different entity running on O2's infrastructure??

ted1

Tesco are a mvno and provide competition againest the ones listed. They just happen yo buy off 02 as that's the best deal they could get, no reason why they couldn't buy off a different operator.
48 are a stand alone entity, who happen to be owned by Telefonica. Competition authority would allow it.

JTMan

vicM wrote: »

bad indeed, but why would they own 50% of tesco, thought that Tesc was a different entity running on O2's infrastructure??

Tesco Mobile are 50% owned by Telefonica and 50% owned by Tesco.

JTMan

cookie1977 wrote: »

Bit of a difference unfortunately as T-mobile and AT&T were the 3rd largest and largest networks in the US so there was a clear competition problem.

Verizon are the largest US mobile telco with 108 million subscribers.

Solair

I'm not convinced that O2 IRL would be sold on its own. It's more likely to be sold together with O2 UK.

Telefonica made an absolute hash of running O2 and seem to have achieved very little since they purchased the mmO2 company.

BT hasn't ever operated O2, it spun mmO2 off as a separate company, which then rebranded Cellnet, Digifone, D2 in Germany, Telefort? NL and a few other bits and pieces.

O2 as a standalone company was pretty progressive (especially at marketing and brand development) and looked at roaming deals etc etc.
Since Telefonica purchased it the company seems to have floundered!

I'd say Telefonica might want to exit the northern Europe market and concentrate on Spain and Latin America, where it is successful.

Perhaps a large chunk of O2 might go to another major European telco looking at gaining bigger foothold in. Northern European markets...

lawhec

I think one of the main problems is that is the Irish Republic market place big enough to sustain 4 separate mobile phone networks? The UK effectively has only four networks now, Germany has four, France has three plus a minor 3G player and many European countries which are similar to Ireland in population and/or physical size usually have only three network operators.

Maybe the Irish market as it stands is really only capable of supporting three networks, with additional competition provided for with MVNOs where applicable.

I wonder if Everything Everywhere, or either Orange or T-Mobile separately would be interested in an Irish network?

Solair

O2 behaved very oddly though.
They made absolutely no use of their huge European and international footprint to encourage people to go with O2. Why isn't there a preferential roaming rate on O2 UK and Movistar in Spain? They're two hugely popular destinations for Irish people.

They seemed to lose all sense of price competition in Ireland. Their packages are all amongst the most expensive on the market.

In the UK they've gained a asimilar reputation and their network was also considered to be a bit worse than their main competition.

Cool branding, that is now perhaps a bit cold and dated looking, won't keep market share.

They've two niche MVNOs the quirky GiffGaff crowd-sourced mobile operator in the UK and the 48 brand here, which seems to be trying to appeal to the same audience as Tallifornia!

cookie1977

Fungus wrote: »

Verizon are the largest US mobile telco with 108 million subscribers.

I think at the time the takeover was muted they were the largest. That aside the Three network in Ireland has only about 4% of irish subscribers whereas in the US at&t and t-mobile both had significant amounts of subscribers to begin with. And if they'd been allowed to merge they would have become the largest network by some way (approx 135million subscribers compared with verizons 108). In ireland even if Three and O2 merged they'd still be behind vodafone. The TCA will probably look at this favourably and may consider the possibilities of hutchison investing significantly in the new companies infrastructure. Something O2 seem un willing or unable to do at present.

Kensington

cookie1977 wrote: »

I think at the time the takeover was muted they were the largest. That aside the Three network in Ireland has only about 4% of irish subscribers whereas in the US at&t and t-mobile both had significant amounts of subscribers to begin with. And if they'd been allowed to merge they would have become the largest network by some way (approx 135million subscribers compared with verizons 108). In ireland even if Three and O2 merged they'd still be behind vodafone. The TCA will probably look at this favourably and may consider the possibilities of hutchison investing significantly in the new companies infrastructure. Something O2 seem un willing or unable to do at present.

Invest at what cost though.
Hutchinson operate all of their Ireland/UK/Australia backend stuff from India - would they have any need to maintain O2's equivalent when they already have their own setup abroad?

Oceans12

cookie1977 wrote: »

I think at the time the takeover was muted they were the largest. That aside the Three network in Ireland has only about 4% of irish subscribers whereas in the US at&t and t-mobile both had significant amounts of subscribers to begin with. And if they'd been allowed to merge they would have become the largest network by some way (approx 135million subscribers compared with verizons 108). In ireland even if Three and O2 merged they'd still be behind vodafone. The TCA will probably look at this favourably and may consider the possibilities of hutchison investing significantly in the new companies infrastructure. Something O2 seem un willing or unable to do at present.

of all the the networks o2's 3g signal is by far the worst! and has become even worse of late.

cookie1977

Hutchison have already signed deals with BT to improve their network. But lest it be misconstrued I would not be in favour of the takeover. If O2 must be sold to help telefonica I'd rather a new player like Orange/France Telecom enter the market. Or maybe even Tesco buy them (which is not going to happen).

Oceans12

yes it would be far better that a new operator would come on the scene rather than an existing operator take it over.

would be far better for competition that way...

Sponge Bob

Three were fourth in Austria and bought number 3 this year ( Orange Austria with 1.9m customers for €1.3bn or slightly over 2x annual revenue) so they have pulled this upscaling manoever before. They flogged off some bits n pieces such as an MVNO like 48 and some duplicate masts after buying it and brought the €1.3bn below €1bn that way.

No number 4 operator ever took over a number 2 operator in Europe before.

drunkmonkey

Oceans12 wrote: »

yes it would be far better that a new operator would come on the scene rather than an existing operator take it over.

would be far better for competition that way...

I think 3 have proved a new operator makes no difference, 3 have spent a fortune on marketing and their network to make it probably the best 3G network in the country and there still struggling to make any impact on mobile phone market share. The people on o2 and Vodafone simply won't move regardless of the cost savings. They mainly move between each other, people looking for value from Vodafone usually move to o2 and visa versa and it takes them years to even make that change.
The only way 3 can get a customer base is to buy one. A new operator will run into the exact same problem 3 have regardless of how good the price plans are. It's more to do with Irish peoples fear of change than anything else.

Those people looking for a new networks to shake things up, what exactly do they want or expect?

vicM

drunkmonkey wrote: »

I think 3 have proved a new operator makes no difference, 3 have spent a fortune on marketing and their network to make it probably the best 3G network in the country and there still struggling to make any impact on mobile phone market share. The people on o2 and Vodafone simply won't move regardless of the cost savings. They mainly move between each other, people looking for value from Vodafone usually move to o2 and visa versa and it takes them years to even make that change.
The only way 3 can get a customer base is to buy one. A new operator will run into the exact same problem 3 have regardless of how good the price plans are. It's more to do with Irish peoples fear of change than anything else.

Those people looking for a new networks to shake things up, what exactly do they want or expect?

Well for starters the new networks provide much more value and hence an avenue to savings due to trying to establish themselves. Meteor was relatively new and in my opinion shook the big 2 quite a bit, ask O2. Irish customers are waking up to change, and looking for value. Competition is always healthy and we dont really need a new entrant per se, just someone to buy out O2, who seem trapped in time

Solair

In Cork City anyway, they're FAR from the best 3G network. Their speeds are terrible!

cookie1977

Solair wrote: »

I'm not convinced that O2 IRL would be sold on its own. It's more likely to be sold together with O2 UK.
.....
I'd say Telefonica might want to exit the northern Europe market and concentrate on Spain and Latin America, where it is successful.

Perhaps a large chunk of O2 might go to another major European telco looking at gaining bigger foothold in. Northern European markets...

Telefonica are still profitable bust just saddling huge debt which investors want to see paid down. I doubt they would want to sell O2 out right. They've previously alluded to disposing of some assets. O2 Ireland has been hugely profitable for them but it now needs some investment (something telefonica seem unwilling or unable to do). O2 ireland is attractive to both existing players and new players so Ii could see it being sold off seperately.

I just wish UPC would consider entering the market as I'd say it would be possible for them to link some of their fibre optic network to O2 infrastructure to improve it.

evolutionqy7

drunkmonkey wrote: »

I think 3 have proved a new operator makes no difference, 3 have spent a fortune on marketing and their network to make it probably the best 3G network in the country and there still struggling to make any impact on mobile phone market share. The people on o2 and Vodafone simply won't move regardless of the cost savings. They mainly move between each other, people looking for value from Vodafone usually move to o2 and visa versa and it takes them years to even make that change.
The only way 3 can get a customer base is to buy one. A new operator will run into the exact same problem 3 have regardless of how good the price plans are. It's more to do with Irish peoples fear of change than anything else.

People don't like Three's coverage, their broadband speeds are quite crap in comparison too.

Even though they have the best offers available. I would have switched a long time ago if the windows in my house wasn't the only place I can get 3G coverage with them. I think they need to invest a lot more in coverage first. I think as more and more people join them their not able to cope with the demand.

Its easy to make new customers, its hard to retain them after the 2 years are up.

Dean_Mc

Just an interesting aside. I got a call regarding package changes from UPC and at the end of the call asked me who my mobile phone was with.... maybe they are sizing up for a takeover.

ED E

Switched from o2 to three, both PAYG. Way better deal for me.

CS in india is a pain, but other than that they're great.


But I really really hope they dont buy o2, as if the two were to merger contention would no doubt end up being higher overall for three customers, which would suck for me.