It is also worth remembering that EE have the lion's share of spectrum and their network is actually the product of two companies' 26+ years of site acquitision and build whose founding shareholders all had very deep pockets (Orange was Hutchison's first proper foray into the UK mobile market as while they owned Rabbit, I don't think you could really call that a mobile on the basis you could only call out and had to be near a base to use it) and One2One had Mercury and several US backers too and then both became subsidiaries of national carriers with huge international operations.
O2, or rather Cellnet as was at the time of course had a security company and BT behind it and only really started to become bigger when it was floated.
No contest really.
