Rumors of a merger between two UK operators, Vodafone UK and Three UK, have resurfaced. This is natural in a market where two huge fixed/mobile players have been created through mergers – first incumbent telco BT acquired mobile operator EE, then Liberty Global-owned cableco Virgin Media merged with Telefónica’s UK arm, O2 UK, last year. Vodafone is heavily mobile-oriented in its home market while Hutchison-owned Three has no fixed lines. At least, together, they would have scale to compete effectively in the 4G/5G space, even if they had limited capability to mount a multiplay challenge to the two big operators. However, last time there was a serious attempt to consolidate two mobile operators – in that case, Three…