Together we stand

WHEN plans to merge Wind and 3 Italia, the third- and fourth-largest mobile operators in Italy, were announced on August 6th their rivals breathed a sigh of relief. Italian operators’ revenues from mobile services have fallen by 40% since 2011, according to GSMA, a global trade association. That has made them skimp on investment. Though half of Italians have a smartphone, fewer than one in ten has access to speedy “4G” services. A weak domestic economy had something to do with this, but so did the industry structure, some argue: too many operators wooing price-sensitive customers the only way they could.

If approved by regulators, the Italian job will be the latest in a series of deals that are consolidating Europe’s mobile market. One by one, countries are switching from having four principal operators—ones that own their cell towers and radio spectrum—to just three (see map). In 2012 European Union regulators let the Austrian subsidiary of 3 Italia’s parent, Hutchison Whampoa, buy the Austrian operations of Orange of France. Telefónica of Spain bought the German mobile business of KPN of the Netherlands, to combine it with its own, and Hutchison bought Telefónica’s in Ireland. Now, Telenor of Norway and TeliaSonera of Sweden want to merge their Danish subsidiaries; and Hutchison, owner of Three in Britain, plans to buy Telefónica’s subsidiary there, O2. Repeated attempts to merge mobile operators in France have failed, but Spain could be next: its number-four operator, TeliaSonera’s Yoigo, has been on sale for a while.

Besides mobile operators merging among themselves, another form of consolidation is going on in which mobile firms combine with fixed-line operators. Most recently BT, Britain’s fixed-line incumbent, has proposed buying a mobile operator, EE, from its parents, Deutsche Telekom and Orange. Vodafone, another British mobile operator, is understood to be talking to Liberty Global, a cable company.

The way to make all these mergers work, says Wolfgang Bock of the Boston Consulting Group, is to take out costs while keeping prices constant (and thus customers content). The savings can then be used to invest in improving the networks. The EU’s competition regulators have, of late, accepted this rationale, even though for a long time they had believed that strong competition, among at least four firms, would spur innovation and investment, not constrain them, while keeping prices down. Many national authorities still think that way.

What has changed the climate at the EU’s headquarters in Brussels is a feeling that rampant competition has given consumers cheap prices, but has left its telecoms companies weak. This worries them at a time when powerful American firms seem to be dominating the brave new digital world. Another concern is that Europe is being slow to roll out fast mobile broadband, and the savings from mergers could pay for it to be speeded up.

Pundits are divided over whether or not the first merger, in Austria, demonstrates the merits of consolidation. For Matthew Bloxham of GSMA, it does. Mobile-broadband speeds and 4G coverage have increased since the merger, he says, while average spending per user has stayed relatively constant. Significant growth in data usage has been offset by reductions in the cost per megabyte.

Antonios Drossos of Rewheel, a Finnish consulting firm, sees things differently. His firm analysed the prices customers paid in Austria and found some had risen by as much as 80% since the merger. “In any event,” he says, “customers should be getting more for less: the cost of mobile gigabytes has plummeted as operators get more spectrum, pay much less for network equipment and build more cells. The question is how much better a deal they would be offered now if a fourth operator were still in the market.” Austria’s national competition regulator, which opposed the deal three years ago, will be releasing a new assessment this autumn.

More important, however, will be the view taken on the various proposed mergers by the EU’s new competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager. In office since November, she has yet to rule on a merger between two mobile operators. When she approved the takeover of a Spanish fixed-line firm, Jazztel, by a mobile firm, Orange, she imposed heavier conditions to preserve competition than had been expected. In her public comments so far she has sounded disinclined to buy the argument that competition hinders investment.

So, when commission staff return from their summer break next month, industry executives will be waiting to see what she does about the proposed combinations of mobile operators in Italy, Britain and Denmark. Will she move the dial further back towards preserving competition?

The first case she will have to rule on is the one in Denmark, her home country. That case may not prove a reliable template for the other decisions. It would result in a greater degree of concentration than either the Italian or the British merger, giving the new firm 45% of a market in which the new third operator is tiny. And she may be wary of attracting the ire of fellow Danes by letting prices rise. She may well let the merger through, albeit laden with conditions to encourage new competitors. That will leave Europe’s policy on mobile mergers murkier than ever.