Network - TMobile
T-Mobile UK started life as Mercury One2One, a GSM mobile network operated by the now-defunct Mercury Communications. Later known simply as One 2 One, it was the world's first GSM 1800 network when it was launched in September 1993.
In its final days it was operated as a joint venture between Cable and Wireless and American cable provider Mediaone Group, which had a number of investments in Britain dating back to its days as the US West Media Group. One 2 One was purchased by Deutsche Telekom in 1999 and rebranded as T-Mobile in 2002.
T-Mobile offers both pay-as-you-go and pay-monthly contract phones. The pay-monthly contracts are branded as 'Flext', which gives the consumer a monetary allowance to use each month, and 'Combi', which works as many other contracts in giving the consumer a fixed amount of minutes and SMS messages. The network also offers other contract options for off-peak users and customers who call within network predominantly, together with 'boosters', which can be added on to a contract to save each consumer money depending on how they use their phone.
T-Mobile launched their 3G UMTS services in the Autumn of 2003.
On 12 December 2007, it was confirmed that a merger of the high-speed 3G and HSDPA networks operated by T-Mobile UK and 3 (UK) was to take place starting January 2008. This will leave T-Mobile and 3 with the largest HSDPA mobile phone network in the country, with a theoretical maximum speed of 6.5 Mb/s, rising to 7.2 Mb/s over the course of the year, although HSDPA access is restricted to Web'n'Walk Plus customers and above.
On September 8, 2009 France Telecom's Orange and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom announced they were in advanced talks to merge their UK operations to create the largest mobile operator with 37% of the market. It is unclear the long-term future of either brand when such deal is completed in November, although both brands will be maintained for the first eighteen months at least.
T-Mobile's UK is also used as the backbone network behind Virgin Mobile (the worlds first virtual network), for both 2G and 3G signals. Although on a Virgin handset/simcard it will report as saying Virgin and will not find T-Mobile UK on a manual network scan.
In November 2009, T-Mobile UK was the subject of an investigation by the
British Information Commissioner's Office following the involvement of some T-Mobile employees in the illegal trade of personal data of millions of customers, in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998.