Brussels, 02/05/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has given the go-ahead to the T-Mobile and mmO2 companies to share site infrastructure for third generation mobile phone services (3G) for limited periods and provide roaming services on their 3G networks in the United Kingdom. The Commission is also expected to take a similar decision soon on an agreement concluded by the same companies in Germany. The agreement was notified in 2002 and the Commission granted it an exemption to competition rules up to 31 December 2007 for small towns and 31 December 2008 for rural areas. The Commission believes that site sharing between companies does not limit competition as the agreement is limited to basic infrastructure such as pylons, power supply, racking and cooling. It is also widely promoted for environmental and health reasons. National roaming between the network providers does - on the one hand - limit network-based competition with respect to coverage, retail prices, quality and transmission speeds, but, - on the other hand it does promote market entry which leads to better and quicker 3G service coverage., notably in outlying ad low density areas in the United Kingdom. In some circumstances, national roaming can even be beneficial in urban areas, as long as it is limited to a short start-up period and helps new and innovative 3G services to be available earlier to customers. The companies will only roam in a number of smaller cities covering less than 10% of the UK population and in none of the ten biggest cities.