The firms said that at the heart of the deal was an agreement to extend their existing network-sharing arrangement of more than a decade.
LONDON (Reuters) -Britain's Vodafone and Virgin Media O2 have agreed to extend their network-sharing deal to the mid-2030s, including a spectrum shift that could help Vodafone to win regulatory approval for its tie-up with mobile operator Three. The $19 billion merger between Vodafone's UK operation and Hutchison's Three UK is the subject of a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation. Under the new network-sharing deal, an enlarged Vodafone-Three entity would sell some of its combined 59% of the best spectrum for 5G networks to Virgin Media O2, which has the lowest share.
The Community Calling scheme was established in 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.