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In a somewhat unsurprising development, newspaper reports have today claimed that Vodafone and Three UK (CK Hutchison) may be gearing up to support their merger by discussing the launch of a new Pay TV service. Such products are typically sold as part of a bundle (convergence), such as alongside fixed broadband, phone and mobile plans.
The merger, which was approved by the CMA in December 2024 (here) and is said to be worth £15bn+, is due to complete any time now. The deal will see Vodafone retain a 51% slice of the business and CKH (Three UK) hold 49%. Both operators have previously promoted the deal as being “great for customers, great for the country and great for competition,” while also resulting in a major £11bn investment to upgrade the UK’s 5G mobile (broadband) infrastructure and coverage.
At present, Three UK is a mobile-only operator, while Vodafone have long since branched out into home broadband by offering related packages via Openreach and CityFibre’s national networks. Despite this, it’s not uncommon for major mergers in the telecommunications sector to be followed by a focus on greater convergence of different services, much as we’ve seen via O2 and Virgin Media, as well as BT and EE before them.
According to the Sunday Telegraph (paywall), both Vodafone and Three UK are allegedly considering something similar post-merger, with the possible future introduction of a Pay TV service and or broadband bundles via Three UK forming part of their discussions. But a spokesperson for Vodafone warned it was still too early to comment on the company’s plans post-merger.
Karen Egan, Enders Analysis, said:
“There are certainly some opportunities for cross-selling Vodafone’s broadband product to Three’s 9.3m mobile subscribers, but broadband is a really tough market right now with very slim margins so they’ll be quite constrained in the level of incentive discounts they can offer.”
In recent years’ convergence has become somewhat an area of mixed success. This is partly because many consumers have been gradually navigating away from the traditional Pay TV model and preferring to sign-up independently via a collection of often independent streaming providers (e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, NOW TV, Disney+ etc.).
The situation has been somewhat underlined by the recent softening of focus on Pay TV services by the likes of TalkTalk and BT, as well as the complete removal of the TV products by BT sibling PlusNet. Suffice to say that it’s much harder today to make an attractive Pay TV product, and broadband can also be very challenging.
However, it’s worth noting that Vodafone has been seeing strong UK take-up of their home broadband products in recent years, and the operator does have experience in Pay TV via some of their other markets outside the UK. The potential is certainly there to do something more with bundles, but whether that would be successful is another matter.