As expected for quite some time, EE have today confirmed that the Orange and T-Mobile brands are now officially closing in the UK. In an interview with Mobile News, EE Chief Commercial Officer Marc Allera confirmed that EE will no longer sell Orange and T-Mobile contracts directly and indirect channels will stop sales in a months’ time on March 2nd.
The two brands – who merged to form Everything Everywhere in 2010, which was later rebranded to EE – were completely dropped from UK high streets when EE launched 4G back in 2012 but the firm continued to offer Orange and T-Mobile pay monthly and pay as you go connections. However Allera revealed that 92 percent of connections during December and January were on EE meaning it was the right time to pull the plug on the Orange and T-Mobile brands:
“It has been something we have discussed for many months now, but we didn’t feel it would be right to push the button on the activity until we had a 90 per cent or more mix of customers opting for EE.
“Only one in ten of our customers are now connecting to T-Mobile and Orange and we are confident the transition to a single EE brand is now the right thing to do.”
All current Orange and T-Mobile customers (around 19 million of them) will remain on their existing deals but will be unable to upgrade when their contract expires. However, EE is enticing them to move to its 4G network with exclusive discounted deals and in time, Allera expects the majority of those customers to move to 4G plans.
“If you are desperate to stay on either Orange or T-Mobile you can. But our channel partners, our stores, our direct channels will only be selling EE.
“We have a large customer base and want to ensure they all stay with us. We do not expect to lose customers as a result. I’m sure we will get to a point when 26 million customers are on EE.”
The move follows reassurances from EE’s CEO in May 2014 that the two brands would remain for “years to come”. However, with millions of customers being added to EE’s 4G network every quarter and the impending sale of EE to BT, it seems that the time is right for Orange and T-Mobile to disappear from the UK (and presumably they’ll be followed swiftly by the EE name once the BT buyout is complete).
As a final goodbye – who remembers this fantastic T-Mobile UK marketing campaign which went viral globally?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB3NPNM4xgo
Hey, I'm Nirave - based out of London, I'm the European Editor for FoneArena. I love travelling and can usually be found reading, playing with the latest tech or writing about travel and tech.