In a conference held recently, T-Mobile and Orange, the two broadband providers that are scheduled to merge into a single entity, have clarified that neither of them is willing to give up any part of their spectrum allocation, as there seems to be no need for doing so.

The proposed merger of France Telecom’s Orange and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile has been under speculation right since an announcement of a merger was made two months back. The most crucial speculation in this regard has been whether regulatory authorities like Ofcom will demand the partners to give up a part of their spectrum allocation before approving the creation of the merged entity.

The merged entity will not only account for more than one third of the UK mobile internet market but will also own more than fifty percent of the broadcast spectrum, and this might not be acceptable to the regulators. The merger is expected to create a spectrum of around 170MHz for the companies, which is evidently huge as compared to the 15MHz spectrum of 3 or 76MHz of Vodafone.

Despite this, Deutsche Telekom’s Chief Operating Officer clarified at the Financial Times World Telecoms Conference that the companies are not planning to give up any part of their spectrum to please Ofcom and get the requisite approval. However, this has been seen as getting a bargaining position by T-Mobile and Orange with respect to the final allocation of the spectrum.