Vodafone has bought out its merger partner CK Hutchison and taken full ownership of VodafoneThree, the combined UK mobile operator the two groups formed from Vodafone UK and Three UK.

The deal collapses the 51/49 joint-venture structure under which the pair completed their long-guessed merger of the British businesses in 2025, ending a split that had governed governance and dividend rights since completion. Vodafone confirmed it had acquired the remaining stake held by the Hong Kong-based group. The buyout makes VodafoneThree a wholly owned Vodafone subsidiary.

The merged operator, with roughly 27 million mobile customers, is the largest mobile business in the UK market by subscriber count. It carries a committed network investment programme of about £11 billion over ten years to build out 5G standalone across the country, one of the conditions the Competition and Markets Authority attached when it cleared the merger after a two-phase investigation.

What does the buyout change for the UK market?

In operational terms, not much at first. The network integration, the 5G rollout and the customer-facing brands continue as planned. What changes is control: Vodafone no longer needs to negotiate capital allocation, dividend policy or strategy with a minority co-owner. Decisions on spectrum refarming, network vendors and any future disposal or restructuring of the UK unit now sit with one board.

For CK Hutchison, the exit completes its withdrawal from a market where Three UK had struggled for scale. The group had spent years arguing that sub-scale operators could not fund full 5G investment on their own, a case regulators in the UK and across Europe weighed when the merger was examined.

Regulatory backdrop

The CMA cleared the merger in December 2024 subject to binding commitments: the £11 billion network plan and short-term price protections for mobile customers, including caps on selected tariffs. Full ownership by Vodafone does not remove those obligations. The undertakings bind the merged entity regardless of its ownership structure, and the buyout will be visible to the regulator as a change of control within the merged group.

Ofcom separately holds the combined operator to its spectrum holdings position, which the merger significantly enlarged by combining Vodafone's and Three's frequency portfolios.

What comes next

The integration work now proceeds under a single owner. Vodafone's stated priority for the asset remains the 5G standalone build, with the ten-year investment schedule running into the 2030s and the first phases of network consolidation already under way.