Mobile Network Rationalisation – Everything Everywhere, T-Mobile, Orange and Hutchison 3G

If you have mobile phone installations on your sites will be aware of the ongoing consolidation in the industry to save costs. I attended the RICS Telecoms Conference on Tuesday 16th where there was a major presentation on the consolidation/integration of Hutchison 3G (H3G), T-Mobile and Orange. The consolidation of H3G and T-Mobile is now effectively completed (they have carried out 12,000 out of their 12,400 planned consolidations and 5,300 of their 5,700 planned deactivations) so you are unlikely to receive any more break notices for these company’s sites for the time being (though some clients still have issues with purported break notices they have received in the past! However, there is another round of rationalisation on the way. Orange and T-Mobile are now owned by a joint venture company, Everything Everywhere, and their networks are being integrated into one. The target is a single network of 18,000 sites. To achieve this they plan to decommission 9,000 sites. It will be a few months before the planning work is complete. If you have them as tenants, especially if there are both Orange and T-Mobile on the same rooftop, you may well hear from them sometime in 2011. An important KPI for them is reliable 24/7 access, so if you have scope to improve access arrangements this may be a cost-effective way to reduce the chances of them exiting your site.

John Woodhouse - Associate
jwoodhouse@dohertybaines.com