It's been a tumultuous ride as Orange and T-Mobile attempted to form a UK partnership and establish the country's largest mobile phone company, which has come under close scrutiny by the competitions authority.

But it seem the European commission isn't so worried, and apparently gave its blessing to the merger after the two companies agreed to a few concessions.

Primarily, the combined Orange/T-Mobile operator would hand a quarter of its bandwidth share back to the industry, making room for other operators to run high-speed mobile data services.

The partnership hasn't been presented to the UK Office of Fair Trading, however, and is still likely to meet with opposition from the likes of O2 and Vodafone. The merger, if it went ahead, would bring 30 million mobile customers under one large banner.