Vodafone has pulled the sale of its paging business to Capita and will shut it down after the competition watchdog threatened to investigate the deal. The Competition and Markets Authority said it was concerned customers may now face price rises. Vodafone said it was disappointed by the CMA’s decision, but made more sense to close the business due to the expense involved with a prolonged investigation. Vodafone said they would do their utmost to minimise the impact on the 1,000 or so customers still using the service.

Vodafone and Capita run the UK’s last two paging businesses and agreed the sale in February. Pagers, a decades-old technology, are still used by many people such as those working in the emergency services because of their reliability, coverage and battery life. They are used by the NHS and the Army as well as lifeboat services.

www.bbc.co.uk/technews (10th May 2017)