Summary

  • The Competition and Markets Authority cleared the Vodafone UK and Three UK combination in December 2024 on conditions; a May 2026 cash payment of £4.3 billion to CK Hutchison is reported to have given Vodafone full ownership.
  • A share purchase and a registry entry are different instruments. RIPE NCC publishes a separate transfer and merger procedure, so a completed merger supplies no automatic date for any change of registered holder.

Two events finished on two calendars, and only one of them carries a number everyone can read. The regulatory event is public: the Competition and Markets Authority cleared the combination of Vodafone UK and Three UK in December 2024, conditional on 5G infrastructure investment and on legally binding commitments that included capping mobile tariffs and offering set contractual terms to mobile virtual network operators for three years, with the CMA and Ofcom overseeing delivery. The financial event is reported rather than filed: in May 2026, Vodafone paid CK Hutchison £4.3 billion in cash and took full ownership of the merged company (Wikipedia). Both the figure and the date rest on secondary reporting rather than a party completion statement, and no spectrum holding, subscriber number, coverage figure or address volume is used anywhere below.

The case file names parties, not holders

The CMA's own record of the inquiry exists under two corporate names: Vodafone Group Plc and CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings Limited (Competition and Markets Authority). That tells you who the regulator investigated. It does not tell you which legal entity holds a single internet number resource; the undertakings and decision text are a separate document from the case record's existence. A case file is a document about market structure. A registry entry is a document about a holder, a resource and a date.

What the registry publishes, and what it leaves open

RIPE NCC maintains a distinct instrument for resource transfers and mergers (RIPE NCC — resource transfers and mergers), separate operational guidance for transfers (RIPE NCC — transfers), and a numbered policy document, RIPE-821 (RIPE NCC — RIPE-821). What that instrument actually tests — which documents an acquirer must file, on what timetable, with what discretion left to the registry — is not established here. The claim stays deliberately narrow: a separate registry procedure exists, and completing a share purchase is not the same act as changing a registered holder. Whether this transaction triggered an update, and when one fell due, are open questions rather than findings.

Five names, five jobs

The names in this story are not interchangeable. Vodafone Limited is the UK operating company recorded in BTW's directory as holding RIPE NCC membership and number-resource governance context (BTW directory entry). Vodafone Group Plc is the group party named in the CMA's case record. CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings Limited is the Hutchison-side party in that same record. The Competition and Markets Authority is the regulator that imposed the conditions. RIPE NCC is the registry that recognises a holder for a named resource on a named date. A change in the first layer — ultimate ownership — says nothing by itself about the last one, and a company name that survives several ownership structures is not thereby a stale entry.

What our own reporting already established

BTW has covered Vodafone Limited at the routing layer, and that work does not answer this question. Our earlier reporting examined the announced autonomous systems AS25135 and AS5378, and separately recorded a Vodafone Limited network record associated with AS203237 that held no prefixes in the global routing table on 12 July 2026. Routing evidence shows what a network announces. It does not show what a registry recognises, and nothing in it establishes a transfer, a holder or a count.

The test that settles it either way

If a dated registry record shows resources consolidated into one holder under an approved transfer, the register supplies the date on which integration reached the addressing layer — plausibly well after the money moved. If two registrations persist under one shareholder structure, integration is an engineering and commercial project with its own timetable, and any reader who treats a completed merger as a consolidated register has confused a share purchase with an allocation change. Both outcomes are informative. Neither can be inferred from a closing announcement, and neither has been observed here.

The merger is finished. The register, from outside, has not said anything yet, and that silence is not a finding of delay, error or breach. It is the ordinary condition of two institutions doing two different jobs at two different speeds.