The proposed merger of Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile and France Telecom’s Orange that was first announced a couple of months back has taken a new turn, with the companies declining to give up any part of their broadcast spectrum for the merger.

It is worth noticing that the announcement of the merger had given rise to a number of speculations, including that the creation of the merged entity might not be approved by Ofcom without the companies giving up a part of their broadcast spectrum. However, the companies declared at a conference that they do not feel the need of giving up their spectrum, even though the merged entity will own a massive percentage of the spectrum available.

The bone of contention between the companies and the regulatory authorities is that the merged entity will cover a major part of the UK mobile market (around 37%) in addition to the owning of more than half of the broadcast spectrum. According to estimates, spectrum for the merged entity is going to be around two and half times that of Vodafone and almost twelve times that of 3 (click for a broadband comparison).

Despite the objections of regulatory authorities, the Chief Operating Officer of T-Mobile said that neither of the companies is willing to appease Ofcom by giving up spectrum and getting approval for merger in return. Though this has been perceived as gaining of a bargaining position by the companies, the future of final allocation of the 900MHz spectrum is still uncertain.