Orange and T-Mobile sign final merger agreement

Orange and T-Mobile's parents France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom have signed the final agreement needed to ensure their proposed merger goes ahead - although the deal has still got to get the green light from regulators.

The paperwork forms a binding agreement and irons out the finer details of the deal announced back in September. Once complete, the resulting company will be a 50/50 joint venture in the UK.

"This joint venture is based on the full commitment of Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom to a long term partnership," said Timotheus Httges, chief financial officer of Deutsche Telekom, in a statement.

"I am very pleased to say that the spirit of this partnership is reflected in the way we conducted and concluded our talks. Our joint venture, which has now passed a major milestone, will set new standards in the UK mobile sector."

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.