O2和Three的合併值得三思

British consumers might be forgiven for wondering what problem the proposed £10bn merger of the mobile providers O2 and Three is designed to solve.

如果英國消費者對O2和Three這兩家移動通信供應商100億英鎊的合併計劃感到疑惑，是情有可原的。

Plans announced last week to weld together the country’s second and fourth largest networks certainly threaten to create an industry leader of impressive scale. With 32m customers, it would be Britain’s largest, putting Vodafone and BT — fresh from announcing the purchase of EE from T-Mobile of Germany and France’s Orange — firmly in the shade.

這兩家公司分別是英國第二大和第四大通信網絡公司。它們上週宣佈的合併計劃，當然有可能打造一家規模令人矚目的行業領導者。如果合併，新公司擁有的3200萬客戶將使得它成爲英國最大的電信公司，將沃達豐(Vodafone)和剛剛宣佈要從德國T-Mobile和法國Orange手中收購EE的英國電信(BT)遠遠甩在身後。

The deal may also allow the pair to achieve substantial savings. Initial estimates suggest they could cut expenses by £400m per annum, equivalent to about 50 per cent of Three’s running costs.

這筆交易還可能讓上述兩家公司節約大量成本。初步估計顯示，合併可以讓兩家公司每年減少4億英鎊的費用，相當於Three運營成本的約50%。

But it is far from clear how much these accolades will actually benefit their legions of subscribers. While Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong-based owners of Three, is holding out the possibility of better coverage, not least of Britain’s still embryonic 4G services, the real impetus for the transaction appears to lie not in improved customer experience — but in cutting competition and hence bolstering returns.

然而，上述好處有多少將實際落實到廣大用戶頭上，還遠不得而知。儘管Three的母公司香港和記黃埔(Hutchison Whampoa)提出，合併可能改善信號覆蓋，尤其是就英國仍處於新興階段的4G服務而言，但這筆交易的真實目的似乎不在於改善用戶體驗，而在於減少競爭、從而提高企業回報。

Hutch is following a well-worn script. If the deal is consummated, Britain would be the latest European country to cut the number of mobile providers below the four generally deemed necessary to preserve a market in which competition, rather than regulation, is the mechanism for setting prices.

和記黃埔遵循的是一條經過反覆驗證的規律。如果交易達成，那麼英國將成爲歐洲最新一個將移動通信提供商數量減少至四個以下的國家，人們通常認爲，一個市場的定價如要由競爭（而不是監管機構）決定，市場上最少需要存在四家提供商。

Germany, Austria and Ireland have all recently allowed deals that reduce the number of networks to just three. In each case, regulatory remedies were imposed to preserve competition compromised by consolidation.

德國、奧地利和愛爾蘭最近都批准了致使電信網絡運營商數量降至僅三家的交易。這三個國家也同時都出臺了監管補救措施，以保護市場競爭不受併購交易損害。

With Germany and Ireland, the deals are too recent to observe their impact on pricing. But in Austria it is possible to see results, and (for customers at least) they are not pretty. In spite of the remedies, mobile pricing has increased sharply. The market leader, Telekom Austria, raised tariffs for smartphone users by nearly 50 per cent last year.

就德國和愛爾蘭而言，交易發生時間距今太短，無法觀察它們對定價的影響。但在奧地利，已經可以看出併購的後果了，（至少就消費者而言）結果不怎麼好看。儘管出臺了補救措施，但移動通信定價出現了大幅增長。市場領導者奧地利電信(Telekom Austria)去年將智能手機用戶的資費提高了近50%。

Nor was consolidation necessary to stimulate lagging capital expenditure.

合併也不一定能刺激目前疲軟的資本支出。

In the years prior to the merger, Austrian operators pumped money into their networks in spite of the market’s four-player structure.

在合併前的那些年，儘管奧地利電信市場上有四家運營商，但各家運營商都對自己的網絡投入了大量資金。

European operators argue that consolidation is vital to bring sanity to an industry they say has been brought to its knees by cut-throat competition. They point to the lower margins achieved in Europe relative to the US, where two giant operators dominate the national market.

歐洲運營商抱怨稱電信行業已經被你死我活的競爭拖垮了，因此合併對這個行業迴歸正軌至關重要。他們指出，歐洲運營商的利潤率相對於由兩家大型運營商主導全國市場的美國更低。

Boosting returns to US levels, Europeans claim, would allow them to provide the sort of new services customers want, such as exclusive media content they can run on their smartphones.

歐洲人稱，如能將收益提高到美國的水平，將允許他們提供客戶想要的那類新服務，比如向客戶提供專屬的媒體內容，供他們在智能手機上瀏覽。

The snag is that European mobile operators do not have unsustainably low profitability. True, returns on capital employed have come down from the very high 20 per cent level of five years ago to just over 10 per cent now. But they remain well above operators’ cost of capital — at least for those that are sensibly capitalised.

問題在於，歐洲移動運營商的盈利沒有低到無法爲繼。誠然，已動用資本回報率已從五年前相當高的20%下降到現在的10%出頭，但仍遠高於運營商的資本成本——至少對於那些資本結構合理的運營商而言。

Three itself is a good example of how competition can both spur and reward fresh thinking. Created explicitly as an additional operator in 2000 to hold prices down, it has in the past 11 years built a profitable business.

Three本身就是個很好的例子，證明競爭可以激勵和獎勵新想法。Three在2000年作爲全新的運營商而創建，目的就是爲了降低價格，而它在過去11年建立起了一個利潤頗豐的業務。

It has done so through innovation. Three was among the first of the operators to spot the importance of the smartphone market, and to design products and tariffs to support its expansion. It is, for instance, the only British operator to offer its customers an upgrade to 4G without charge.

Three是通過創新實現這一成績的。Three是第一批發現智能手機市場重要性的運營商之一，於是開始設計產品和資費以支持這項業務的擴張。比如，Three是唯一一家免費爲客戶升級到4G服務的英國運營商。

Stripping the UK market of its fourth player will place the onus on the regulator to substitute for this competitive stimulus. Most of the remedies applied in “four to three” markets have focused on forging a privileged position for so-called “virtual” operators that run services perched on one of the main operators’ networks. But by their very nature, these entities can neither lead on price, nor drive systems improvements.

如果除掉英國市場的第四個競爭者，就要由監管機構來彌補競爭刺激的不足。“四變三”市場採用的多數補救辦法，是向所謂的“虛擬”運營商賦予特殊地位，這些虛擬運營商在主要運營商之一的網絡上運行服務。但就其本性而言，這些虛擬運營商既不能引導價格，又不能推動系統改進。

National regulators have tended to be wary about consolidation. For instance, the German regulator fought hard to thwart the merger of Telefónica/O2 and E-Plus, but was overruled by the European authorities, which took the lead because of the supranational nature of the parent companies involved. Brussels tends to take a more detached view of local competition, focusing on wider questions of competitiveness and investment.

各國監管機構都傾向於對合並採取謹慎態度。例如，德國監管機構一直努力阻止西班牙電信(Telefónica)德國子公司O2收購E-Plus，但遭到歐洲當局否決，歐洲當局此舉開了先河，因爲所涉母公司具有跨國性質。布魯塞爾通常傾向於對本地競爭採取一種更超然的態度，而專注於競爭力和投資方面更廣泛的問題。

It would be a mistake if Britain went the same way — especially on grounds of European precedent. The mobile business remains a national market. Policy designed to protect consumers and ensure domestic competition should not be abandoned lightly.

如果英國以上述歐洲做法爲先例，走他們的老路，將是一個錯誤。移動業務仍是國內市場，旨在保護消費者和確保國內競爭的政策不應輕易被放棄。

The merger of Three and O2 should be referred back to the UK and given the serious scrutiny it deserves.

Three和O2的合併應交回給英國，並受到應有的嚴格審查。