The UK’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has made a request to the European Commission that it refer the UK aspects of the proposed merger of Orange and T-Mobile to the OFT. France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom announced the plan to merge their UK operations in September 2009.

The Informer attended a glittering occasion at London’s Science Museum last night, held to celebrate 25 years of the UK cellular industry. He had a wonderful time, wandering around the museum looking at all the old relics, some of whom had some fascinating stories to tell.

Over the years, the Informer has heard staff from various operators say what a great employer they’ve got. Vodafone, Orange, Virgin, Telefonica, 3, Zain (especially Virgin, though; it’s almost as if it’s a condition of employment), the list goes on. Now that he comes to think of it, though, he’s never heard it said by anyone from T-Mobile. Nobody’s suggesting T-Mobile’s a bad place to work, of course, just that none of its employees has ever volunteered information to the contrary in the Informer’s direction.

Employees at T-Mobile’s UK operation have been identified as the culprits in the illegal sale of subscriber data affecting “many thousands of customers”.