Three European mobile radio operators form alliance

(Heise)
(post-edited Babelfish translation - see original news item in German). Together they want to be strong: The Spanish Telefonica Moviles and the Italian Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) have announced the formation of an alliance with the German T-Mobile. In the future, their total of 162 million customer will be offered uniform services across national borders. As the first result of the co-operation, the partners want to offer special roaming agreements with new services and tariffs in the areas of speech, data communication and mobile Internet. With customers in 25 countries on three continents, the alliance has by its own reckoning "probably the largest customer base to the world". In Western Europe the operators have 98.3 million customers, in Eastern Europe 14.4 million, Latin America 36.6 million, the USA 9.9 million and in the Mediterranean shoreline states about 2.8 million. In principle the alliance of the mobile phone subsidiaries of the former telecom monopolists from Germany, Italy and Spain will be open to further mobile phone operators. The next steps must however first be agreed with the authorities concerned.