02 joins cross-Europe mobile alliance

mm02 has officially announced the creation of a pan-European mobile alliance designed to help smaller domestic operators take on the telco behemoths and give customers a more coherent cross-border service.

The new alliance will take in 40 million subscribers and extend across the countries its members operate in, although the alliance intends to expand its reach further in the future. Other European mobile operators are reported to be considering joining the alliance at a later stage.

The union will afford customers better GPRS and MMS connectivity across the members' networks in Europe and give them access to new services including cross-border flat rate price plans and a pre-paid top-up service when travelling abroad.

In addition to 02's UK, German and Irish arms, the other operators who will be taking part in the alliance are: Amena (Spain), One (Austria), Pannon GSM (Hungary), sunrise (Switzerland), Telenor Mobil (Norway) and Wind (Italy).

It's thought that the move comes in response to unions formed by other mobile operators in the area. Eden Zoller, research director at Ovum, said in a statement: "The new pan-European Mobile Alliance, headlined by O2 and Telenor, is a defensive move against the existing alliance between T-Mobile, Telefonica, TIM and Orange and, more importantly, Vodafone, an international super operator with huge scope and scale that has every one running scared.

With the exception of O2 and Telenor, the new alliance contains some of Europe's smaller operators while all of them have mature domestic markets. For operators like these that are outside of the biggest groups there is a risk being left behind - on roaming, on international services, and on device specification and purchasing power."