Will T-Mobile be the first big UK mobile player to go in a new wave of consolidation?

Analysts are saying that there are simply too many players in what is a viciously overwrought competitive environment. They also that in addition to reducing the number of opportunistic minnows nipping around in the shallows and nibbling at crumbs, at least one of the Top Five big fish will also have to go on the slab if the market is to re-balance itself.

Those most often mentioned as being the weakest amongst the major mobile operators are 3 and T-Mobile. Indeed, talk of 3's imminent demise has become so routine over the years that it has been relegated to the level of background static - a comforting white noise that no one takes much notice of any more.

Time and time again Li Ka-shing, the chairman of 3's parent company Hutchison Whampoa, has made it very plain that 3 is in the game for the long haul and that, courtesy of his long pockets and stubborness he will not allow the venture to fail. That remains the case.

This leaves T-Mobile as the sole UK Big Five mobile network operator (currently standing at Number Four in the rankings and generally acknowledged not to be doing as well as it might) most likely to be acquired by, merged with, or otherwise subsumed into another.