Incumbents Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom said on Friday that they are considering whether to share radio access network in Europe.
In a joint statement, the two companies said that they were also considering partnering on areas such as equipment…
Incumbents Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom said on Friday that they are considering whether to share radio access network in Europe.
In a joint statement, the two companies said that they were also considering partnering on areas such as equipment standardisation, home media servers, e-health and connected car technology.
The two companies also announced plans to cooperate on machine-to-machine and WiFi roaming initiatives.
Elie Girard, executive vice president of strategy and development at France Telecom, said the collaboration would enable the two groups to “address new growth opportunities as well as operational efficiency issues in a limited and targeted set of business domains for the benefits of our respective customers, while maintaining our individual strategies”.
In June 2010, DT and FT completed the merger of their UK subsidiaries, T-Mobile UK and Orange, which are now jointly known as Everything Everywhere, although both brands have been maintained.
Everything Everywhere announced in September 2010 that it would be opening up the networks of both Orange and T-Mobile to customers of either brand in October.
A spokesperson at France Telecom said that for the moment the companies were only looking at sealing partnerships and there was no plan of creating joint ventures. He also discarded any share swap plan.