Paul I understood EE to be owned by BT for some time now. EE/BT have roaming relationships with many carriers but do not have their own licence in most/all as I understood it.
Since most of the countries sold off spectrum individually the carriers had to buy a licence in each country if they wanted to actually run the air time platform?
If you go to Germany the phone will not show EE but usually DT or T-Mobil. I have had it show O2-DE as well in the past.
Big players like Vodafone will have a licence in many countries but used to pair in some (France will see your Voda SIM using SFR I think?) which they call secondary markets.
DT were also in this larger category.
Telefonica (through O2 in some places) were present directly in several markets as well.
If you look carefully they tend to hop as a group. I would never describe it as a cabal of course.
