The European Commission has approved the proposed creation of a UK mobile commerce joint venture between Vodafone, Telefónica and Everything Everywhere.

It had been investigating the planned m-commerce partnership - nicknamed ‘Project Oscar’ - since April as there had been concerns about the potential size and power of the scheme.

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s been a busy day for Everything Everywhere. Alongside its 4G news came rumours that the company was planning a rebrand, with ‘Orange’ and ‘T-Mobile’ eventually being dropped in favour of the ‘Everything Everywhere’ branding.

There’s now an official statement from Everything Everywhere:

In February T-Mobile UK launched a new tariff that allowed customers to make unlimited calls, send unlimited texts, and use the mobile internet as much as they wanted without any ‘fair use’ restrictions.

It was called The Full Monty and one of the notable benefits was the ability to ‘tether’ a smartphone via WiFi to a laptop or tablet computer for internet browsing and downloading.

Everything Everywhere has published interim results for the first six months this year.

Service revenue for the six-month period until the end of June 2012 was £2,989 million. That’s a 1.8% drop year-on-year, although removing the effect of Ofcom’s mobile termination rate cuts would show a 3.1% increase.

Vodafone Group has split its European operations into two new operating regions; Northern & Central Europe and Southern Europe.

Philipp Humm has been appointed as Chief Executive for Northern & Central Europe with effect from October, while Paolo Bertoluzzo is the new Chief Executive of Southern Europe.