3 Legs Good – 2 Legs Better?

The European Commission’s evolving approach to consolidation in mobile markets

The recently announced agreement under which Melita is to take over Epic has brought the question of mobile market consolidation firmly onto the Maltese agenda. Readers of George Orwell will recall the sheep of Animal Farm, who first bleated “four legs good, two legs bad” and later, when circumstances changed, “four legs good, two legs better”. The history of EU merger control in the mobile sector invites a similar observation. For over a decade, Brussels treated a reduction in the number of mobile network operators (‘MNOs’) with considerable suspicion, and many perceived a market of three operators as the floor below which the European Commission would not go. More recently, the tone of the debate has shifted towards scale, investment and European competitiveness.