Telefonica & O2, it’s a plagiarized script but at least promises a nice sequel

UPDATE: Looks like journalists at the FT have also seen this movie before: Link

It's the shining star of the UK mobile phone industry, with a bright and powerful brand that is attractive to youth segments, and is the fastest growing network. Its marketing is seen as innovative and fresh, optimistic, and even a little daring.

And now it's being bought out by an incumbent phone company from continental Europe, a lumbering, former state-monopoly grossly overstaffed, overcapitalized, and overpoliticized, is now over here overpaying.....

wait a second. I've seen this movie before. This is France Telecom buying Orange about 5 years ago. Boorrrrrrrinng.

In fact, I'll spoil things by telling you the ending: All the good people at O2 leave over the next couple years, the brand remains but lack of new ideas makes it start to look tired and past its prime, and finally net adds and revenue growth starts to lag behind competitors.

But at least the plot will prepare us for a cool sequel!

Here's the plot: Lumbering former state monopoly telco, distracted by overseas adventures, neglects major threats to home market and core products. The climax is an epic, Titanic-like sinking of the incumbent telco with remaining employees getting out while they can as last diehards insist that the band must play on.

I hear they're thinking of casting Jazztel for the part of home market threat, but are undecided between Skype, Yahoo, Google, MSN, and many others eminently qualified to play the part of core product threat.

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