BT, EE & O3

Last week BT finally got the green light to buy EE so, as the Federation of Communication Services gleefully points out, they now own the company that Ofcom fined £1m for poor customer complaints handling. EE has the second highest complaint rate of all mobile operators, beaten only by Vodafone (not just beaten though, well beaten – 20 points to 9).

It’s odd then that BT has chosen to keep the EE brand, but BT isn’t exactly renowned for good customer service so it’ll be interesting to see which way those statistics go.

EU noises indicate that they won’t allow the merger of O2 and Three without punitive restrictions which are unlikely to be accepted by them, and today Sharon White, the new Director of Ofcom, wrote to the European Commission asking them to block it. So no O3 then.

But also no talk of creating a real wholesale market either, which in my view would be the best way of creating real competition and innovation in the stagnant mobile market. BT have announced that they’re pushing their MVNOs into their wholesale division. Maybe they’ll notice that there’s a big new market there just waiting for them – all they have to do is look at boring old customers and services instead of sexy acquisitions and re-orgs.