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Future not so bright for Dutch OrangeThe European Commission has cleared the way for Germany's
T-Mobile to acquire Orange Netherlands from France Telecom. It found that "on
the Dutch mobile retail market Orange has not been a particularly aggressive
competitor." Orange's motto previously was that "the future's bright, the
future's Orange." But in the Netherlands the Orange brand is set to disappear.
Mobile Software Insight wonders whether the rights to the name will
revert back to Hutchison. The acquisition has been widely anticipated after Deutsche Telekom's Rene
Obermann announced he was going to expand T-Mobile inside Europe. France Telecom's Spanish acquisition, Amena, hasn't been faring too well
either, fuelling speculation that it too might be ripe for a take-over. Significantly the Commission said that the combined T-Mobile Netherlands
would be the third largest in terms of revenues while being the second largest
in terms of subscriber numbers. With the former monopoly, KPN, being the leader that means that Vodafone
Netherlands must be quite profitable for its size. The Commission seems convinced that the loss of one Dutch operator won't
hinder the chances of an MVNO getting a good deal from one of the remaining
three. This still leaves T-Mobile's ambitions to add subscribers unclear. Can it
really afford to miss the chance to enter emerging markets before they, too, get
overcrowded? |
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