Vodafone-Three will create 'biggest, widest mobile network in UK'

So thank you, Paul, and good morning to you as well. Thank you for giving me the chance to speak to you this morning. It's really important to look at what comes at the heart of this merger. At heart, it's an £11 billion investment to create the biggest, widest mobile network in the UK. The UK today trails behind the majority of the European market in terms of 5G, and we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create such an amazing solution for our consumers and businesses in the UK. We're very pleased to see today that we're getting to a next stage. As you said, the announcement from the CMA is provisional findings, meaning we still need to work through the coming few months to work with the CMA to come to a conclusion and address their concerns. We believe that this deal day one will bring a lot of benefits to our customers because it's a merger that will... I mean, customers day one will be able to pay the same price for what is a much better quality network, and over the course of the plan we will be building the best, fastest, and biggest network in the UK. The CMA clearly think differently; notwithstanding they have doubts about your promise there on the network, but they say prices will go up for consumers. I mean, your customers faced a nearly 8% price increase already this year. Can you guarantee consumers won't pay more? So it's a really good question. Just to address this, we completely disagree with the CMA conclusion when it comes to pricing. That's because for many of our customers today, when they go out on the street, there are more than four operators operating in the market. There are a number of brands that are selling mobile in the market, and that is the level of competition we see in the UK. On the back of this transaction, what we will have is a scaled player in the market, a scaled player that's not only able to compete on price but will be competing on quality. There is a massive population out there that's suffering from digital divide. There are areas in towns and villages where they are struggling with coverage, and we think and believe that our investment will address this concern. Another point to add is what we heard earlier from Stewart, which is they see the uplift in quality, and we are willing to commit on the level of investment going forward. So we're willing to take a legally binding commitment on the level of investment that will provide benefits and positive customer outcomes not only in the main cities but most importantly in the rural side, in villages, to cover every hospital, every school in the UK. That is the commitment we have in terms of building our network. The other commitment we made to the CMA is a fair distribution of the radio waves through an agreement with one of our competitors to transfer some of the spectrum, which will not only benefit our customers but will benefit more than 50 million customers in the UK.

So what I'm saying is, I think today we have an opportunity of £11 billion of investment out of our own money, not taxpayers' money, to create what is the best network. This will not only encourage our competitors to compete with us from a pricing perspective, but you can expect them to react by investing more in their networks. So eventually, customers – and that's our view – customers in the UK will be able to get a much better quality network, much bigger, out of a much bigger investment. And also the price competition, our view is that it's not going to be reduced; in fact, it's going to be enhanced on the back of this merger. Our proposed merger we see it as pro-competition, pro-consumer, and will accelerate investment in the 5G infrastructure that's highly needed for AI, a better digitally connected UK for the future.

So we've already made a commitment and we are willing to undertake a legally binding agreement to underpin our investment with timeline plans and execution. And that is something that has been at the heart of this merger day one. We are going to work with the CMA over the coming three months to make sure that we address all their concerns when it comes to all the other remedies. We are confident that we can reach a solution, but of course we will need to work this out through the coming few months. And as I said earlier, the provisional findings today sets out what we need to work on for a final conclusion by the CMA in December.

I have very high confidence. I think, when you ask this question, we really, it comes at a moment in time when this is really a transformational merger. Not only transformational for us as a business, transformational for the UK in general. I think it comes at a point where economic growth is at the heart of what the UK wants to drive, and we see a private investment of £11 billion going into the market is an amazing opportunity to pursue, in addition to the positive outcomes that our consumers will benefit from.