Vernacularism

Six months ago the Financial Times reported that Deutsche Telekom was not prepared to endure any more failures that were associated with its daughter company, T-Mobile UK. Now an article in Sunday’s FT says that Vodafone is showing interest in taking over T-Mobile after it realized that Deutsche Telekom is willing to part with it. No claims have been made by any parties in either accepting or denying the rumours.

The rumours were set off last month when Deutsche Telekom pushed down the value of T-Mobile in its books and this was taken as a signal that it was planning to let go of the company. At that point of time, it was strongly believed that either 3 mobile or Orange would step up and make some moves for acquiring T-Mobile. However, it now appears that Vodafone is the strongest contender for the deal.

If this acquisition does go through, Vodafone would become the strongest player in the mobile broadband market (click for info on Vodafone mobile broadband) by increasing its share from 25 per cent to 40 per cent. This could cause market regulators some concern, as their main aim is to maintain a healthy balance in the market by keeping it competitive. Therefore Ofcom will not let the deal go through easily, until it has satisfied itself that the competition in the market will not be harmed by the acquisition.