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The European Commission approved Tuesday the purchase by T-Mobile NL of Tele2 NL on the Dutch mobile market without any conditions.
"After careful analysis, our survey revealed that this purchase did not significantly change the prices and quality of mobile services for Dutch consumers," EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a comment.
The Commission began its in-depth review on 12 June. When the Commission starts an in-depth review of a merger, it is generally necessary to seek concessions modifying the conditions of competition for approval. These concessions may, for example, be business transfers.
However, the Commission considered that the purchase would result in no price increase. This is partly because Tele2's market share is low – 5% – and the combined share is only around 25%.
T-Mobile is the third largest mobile operator in the Netherlands and Tele2 is the fourth. The most important is KPN and VodafoneZiggo.
The Commission pointed out that the Dutch mobile phone market currently presents the lowest prices of the EU and the quality of online services.
In addition, the Commission considered that the merger would not make it more likely that the last three mobile operators would coordinate their price actions. KPN and VodafoneZiggo have different strategies, the Commission noted.
The third concern of the Commission concerned virtual mobile network operators (Simpel and Youfone), which do not have their own networks, but use the networks of others. However, the Commission's investigation has shown that the concentration would not cause any injury to these operators.
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