The UK’s competition watchdog has provisionally cleared the proposed merger of Virgin Media and O2 after concluding it would not materially impact competition (and thus the price and availability of services) in the telecoms wholesale market.
Because who needs competition, right?
I agree with the watchdog. O2 merging with Virgin Media doesn’t reduce the number of distinct providers in the space, and thus, doesn’t affect competition in my view.
We’re all still on the treadmill of annual higher than inflation price rises and will continue to be 
whether VM owns O2 or not.
You realise this is just competition? Virgin Media competes with BT Broadband services and O2 competes with EE mobile services. Now they’re going to merge (which doesn’t remove any major infrastructure providers / big suppliers either)
If I recall a while ago, Three tried merging with another big carrier (maybe O2?) and it got blocked. The CMA do a good job
Three buying O2 is bad, because it reduces number of mobile service providers.
Virgin Media buying O2 doesn’t reduce the number of mobile service providers.
On this basis, there’s no significant threat to competition.
Three major carriers all operating their own networks is not a downgrade in competition since Three had less towers and a poor reception
It would have added value for both and allowed them to easier compete with EE who had towers from T Mobile, Orange, etc