Deutsche Telecom and Orange received shares, £3.46 billion in cash
BT confirmed the completion of its £12.5 billion ($17.8 billion) acquisition of U.K. mobile operator EE, which was previously controlled by Deutsche Telekom and Orange.
In return for their stakes in EE, Deutsche Telekom and Orange received £3.46 billion in cash and shares. After the completion of the acquisition the German telco now owns 12% of the new company while the French firm controls 4%.
The new BT now offers fixed and mobile telephony, broadband and TV services. BT controls 31% of the U.K. fixed broadband market, according to telecom regulator Ofcom. BT currently offers wireless service through a mobile virtual network operator agreement with EE.
EE ended the third quarter of 2015 with 31.3 million subscribers, including 12.6 million LTE customers. The operator’s LTE network currently reaches approximately 93% of the country’s population.
BT also confirmed DT CEO Tim Hoettges has joined BT’s board.
Earlier this month, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Consumer Authority cleared the way for BT to acquire EE. The regulator affirmed the deal is not expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition in any U.K. market. The regulator highlighted the BT Group and EE operate largely in separate areas, with BT strong in supplying fixed communications services, EE strong in supplying mobile communications services and limited overlap between them in both categories of service.
BT is expected to announce its plans for EE during the presentation of the company’s quarterly financial results.
BT announces global availability of BT Connect Intelligence IWAN
In related news, BT announced the global launch of BT Connect Intelligence IWAN, a managed service designed to enable organizations to automatically route and optimize network traffic and gain visibility of applications performance. BT Connect Intelligence IWAN integrates Cisco’s Intelligent WAN solution into the BT Connect portfolio of network services.
The new launch builds on BT’s existing intelligent network capabilities by using a hybrid environment and managed software-defined wide area network technology. BT and Cisco have been marketing and selling the managed solution to their respective enterprise customer bases in the U.K, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America since December 2015.
