Telefónica has said it will leave the FreeMove alliance, as requested by the European Commission, to enable it to complete its purchase of O2.
A statement from the European Commission said that it was the issue of roaming that had most concerned it. With Telefonica in FreeMove and O2 in the Starmap alliances, the Commission was worried that O2 would in effect be joining the FreeMove alliance, which would leave the UK with no operator not in the FreeMove alliance, other than Vodafone (and, presumably 3, although they seem not to count).
To get the deal through, the Spanish giant said it would leave FreeMove, but will it join Starmap? Starmap has until now been an alliance of smaller operators. The presence of a global player like Telefonica would change its nature radically.
And there would be a lot of integration and back office changes to turn Telefonica’s roaming contracts from Freemove into Starmap.
Additionally, it is fair to ask, what will happen to those FreeMove customers under Telefonica management? FreeMove works by offering corporate multinationals a single point of management whilst offering “seamless” roaming services across it member networks.
We might also ask what the reaction of other FreeMove members and customers will be, now they are denied the automatic reach of Telefónica’s territories in their roaming agreements.