Due to the high competition and low profit margins of the mobile network operators, an odd market structure with no precedents is being gestated in the UK: there will be only two mobile networks but five major brands, MVNOs aside. The first network is the result of the merging of T‑Mobile and Orange (Everything Everywhere) and the network sharing agreement of T‑Mobile and Three (Mobile Broadband Network Limited); the other network, Cornerstone, is result of the network sharing agreement of  Vodafone and Telefónica (O2).

There are multiple ways to analyze and interpret this situation: on one side, regulated and mandated fragmentation against natural monopolies/duopolies is a disaster waiting to happen that lowers the level of network investment, thus it always reverts back to their natural structure, as the Ma Bell history clearly shows; on the other side, the companies are forced to keep a façade of competition under multiple commercial entities that resell network access to the consumer, a messy situation that only a captured regulator would agree with.

What I do know is that this experiment would only happen in the UK and not under the current rule of the European Union, but given how influential and imitated the policies of the OFCOM regulator are, it’s a matter of time before other states follow. And I wonder how this play with BEREC, the European telco super-regulator: will network sharing create duopolies in every national market under the pretext of the incipient 4G deployment, but just some mega-marketing companies at the European level? Will the incentives for network investment be perfectly aligned under such structure?