Orange and T-Mobile merged last year to form "Everything Everywhere" . The two brands have been kept separate but that hasn't stopped them sharing their 2D networks ensuring customers always have the best signal.

Everything Everywhere have now announced they are combining T-Mobile and Orange's 3G networks, which are they calling "The Big Switch-On". Over the next few months the two networks will be combined offering customers improved signal strength and data speeds on their 3G device.

This might seem like a minor gesture but many customers have taken advantage of the 2D networking sharing. Infact, over 1.7 million days worth of calls have been made by customers outside the network they are on.

From next week the two networks will be merged region-by-region , but we're not sure which regions will see the upgrade first.