Vodafone and Three's UK arms locked in merger talks
"The merged business would challenge the two already consolidated players for all UK customers ands bring benefits through competitively priced access to third reliable, high quality, and secure 5G network throughout the UK," Vodafone added in its statement., CK Hutchison has explored the sale of Three UK for some time, believing that its nine million local customers mean that it is sub-scale in a market requiring meaty cash investments developing network infrastructure.
Paolo Pescatore, tech, media and telco analyst at PP Foresight, told us:"Ultimately scale is key and with this in mind a move to merge could make sense. This will be subject to regulatory scrutiny and concessions will need to be made to get this over the line.