o2 Loses Contract with apple

The Mobile Phone Providers Orange UK and T-Mobile UK might take over the contract with apple iPhone

o2 Loses The contract due to last month of lose the signal and cant cope with traffic from the iPhone

Tom Alexander, Orange’s UK chief executive, who will head the new business, said the size of the joint venture with 28.4m customers and 37pc of the market, will give it a “huge advantage” in bidding for popular handsets, such as the iPhone.

“We [Orange] are already the network of choice for multimedia devices, we’ve already got the biggest 3G network (which is used to deliver mobile phone broadband), now with T-Mobile we’ve got an even stronger 3G network,” Mr Alexander said. “We’ve got a fantastic platform and are obviously the network of choice for all multimedia devices, including potential the iPhone in future.”

O2, the current UK market leader, is expected to lose its exclusive rights to some versions of the iPhone next month. O2, which is owned by Telefonica of Spain, has come under fire from customers frustrated with the network’s poor 3G coverage.

Gervais Pellissier, finance director of Orange’s parent company France Telecom, said: “We [France Telecom and T-Mobile’s parent Deutsche Telekom] are both very good partners of Apple in our domestic markets and [the joint venture means] we have a very good chance to be a strong partner here in the UK”.

The joint venture will have 37pc of the British market, ahead of O2 with 27pc and Vodafone with 25pc. At present Orange has a 22pc share and T-Mobile has 15pc.

The deal is likely to come under intense scrutiny from competition regulators at the European Union. Although Mr Alexander and Richard Moat, managing director of T-Mobile UK and chief operating officer of the joint venture, said they expect the merger to be approved because the combined group will not dominate the market as much as some operators do in other European countries.