Everything Everywhere Except...3G and HD Voice and...

As some of you may know, Everything Everywhere is a merger of the UK Orange and UK T-Mobile. The EU took a hard look at it since it would be the UK's largest mobile operator and approved the deal in March.

Everything Everywhere just announced the first tangible benefit of the deal is free roaming between networks. This makes sense as it's the easiest thing to do. A September 6^th press release actually claims though this is the "single, biggest improvement of network coverage since the birth of mobile". As a marketing guy, I love how bombastic this is, but really?

To me, the network coverage is exactly the same. There are no extra towers being built. It's just a first step in a single network. But this is only for 2G services. Why? I don't know. Is it because most people are on 3G now and that won't be free if you happen to roam between networks? I hope there is a technical reason as opposed to that since only a 2G benefit is specious.

Given Orange UK just announced HD Voice coverage in the UK, HD Voice calls also can't be switched between networks at this time since T-Mobile UK would need to have that implemented, including having HD capable phones. So it's not quite everything everywhere yet, except as a vision. A good vision at that, but the everything and everywhere part still has some ground to plow.