News stories come in all shapes and sizes when you work in the mobile phone industry, from small stuff like the Orange Vegas being launched, to big stuff like the HTC HD2 being launched, right up to the really big, game-changing stuff; y’know, the likes of Android hitting the market or, as is the case here, Orange and T-Mobile merging to form one supermassive telecoms megacorp, which will, in one fell swoop, become the UK’s biggest mobile network.
Yup, that is easily the biggest news story in the mobile industry all year, and today, it’s got one step closer to finally happening, as according to The Register, both Orange and T-Mobile have now signed on the dotted line.
After a two month period of due diligence*, both companies have put their signatures on the official document, and the merger’s all set to go ahead.
They even managed to sign it nearly on time, as well.
So, the next step, now, is for to go past the regulator’s investigation, and presuming the monopolies and mergers commission doesn’t have a hissy fit (considering how incredibly competitive the UK mobile market is, it’s unlikely they will have a hissy fit), the brand, hybrid, supernetwork should emerge from its cocoon around the middle of 2010.
And then, in my mind, there’s the just question of what the new network’s name will be. My preference? Orange Mobile. I know it’s not exciting, or silly, or any of that, but it makes logical sense, because then, they could keep all the branding of stuff like Orange Wednesdays. Ooh, or (since I’m a proper Northerner, ayup, tha’nos, sithee) how about T’Orange?
Ay’, I likes that, ‘cos it’d make them t’only network what could be quoted, ‘appen as not, in t’four Yorkshiremen sketch by t’Monty Python lads, me owd mucker. Ooh, and they could get Michael Palin as their spokesman, and ‘e could guh round all t’little villages in t’Caucusus Marntains, or whatever ‘uge tracts o’ land ‘e wanders ovver, and bring t’gift o’ telecommuuunications to t’rest o’ t’world…
‘Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, by ‘eck, they can get that Leah Bracknell what played Zoe Tate in Emmerdale as their spokeswoman an’all, ‘cos she is, like, t’epitome of Yorkshire woman’ood.
Er, I may have overthought that idea…
*Due diligence: a term that, for some reason, gets right up my nose, which effectively means “checking we’re not going to spend three billion quid on something that’ll COST us twelvety billion quid in lost profits, in the long run”. Or something like that. I don’t know why it gets up my nose. It just does.
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