Radical move by satellite group echoes the great tower divestment by telcos – EQT Infrastructure VI fund is satco’s potential investor
We are potentially seeing the trend of telcos selling off their passive infrastructure in the satellite sector. Eutelsat Group has signed an exclusive option agreement with the EQT Infrastructure VI fund (EQT) regarding its passive ground infrastructure assets.
The proposed transaction would involve Eutelsat carving out its passive assets (land, buildings, support infrastructure, antennas and connectivity circuits for the combined portfolio of teleports and satellite network portals) into a separate unit.
It would be incorporated as a standalone legal entity. EQT and own 80% of the capital. Eutelsat Group would remain a long-term shareholder, anchor tenant and partner of the new company. EQT would hold the outstanding 20%.
Eutelsat claims that if the move goes ahead, the new entity would be “the world’s largest pure-play, operator-neutral, ground station- as-a-service company, bringing together top-level teams combining satellite-specific knowledge with highly experienced infrastructure service operators for optimum customer service”.
Long-term play
Assuming the transaction is completed, Eutelsat would enter into a long-term framework master service agreement (MSA) covering services to be rendered by the new company to Eutelsat Group. The MSA would assure the seamless continuity of Eutelsat’s activities “at the same high level of efficiency, reliability and security”.
The proposed transaction values the new entity at an enterprise value of €790 million and shift future maintenance capex to the new entity. The proceeds would enable Eutelsat to strengthen its financial profile and focus on the next generation of its multi-orbit fleet.
Eva Berneke, Chief Executive Officer of Eutelsat Group, said, “We are proud to become the first satellite operator to embark on this innovative transaction which would allow us to build on the model adopted in other industries, and to optimise the value of our extensive ground network.
“In EQT we have found a partner of the highest quality, who shares our vision. This transaction would represent a win-win situation for all parties, and would enable Eutelsat to strengthen its financial profile, whilst continuing to rely on the unparalleled quality and reliability of its ground infrastructure. Moreover, we are confident that with the backing of EQT, the business would be in a position to fully embrace the opportunities opening up to it as the new Global leader in this dynamic sector.
Carl Sjölund, Partner within the EQT Value-Add Infrastructure advisory team, added: “At EQT, we identified satellite ground stations as an attractive digital infrastructure vertical several years ago. They play an important role in ensuring global connectivity, especially for those not covered by fixed and mobile connectivity solutions and require deep global expertise in developing and operating telecommunications infrastructure businesses. We are delighted to partner with Eutelsat Group to create a ground station leader and capture the growth opportunity fuelled by technological innovation.”
The transaction is subject to customary conditions and approvals by the relevant regulatory authorities as well as consultation with French security authorities and the appropriate employee representative bodies. Closing of the deal is expected in the first quarter of calendar year 2026.
Photo courtesy of Eutelsat, showing ground station at Turin, Italy.
It attracted 10 million more 4G customers and now has 111 million digital service users – plans be solely Nasdaq listed and initiate a share buyback programme
VEON, which has headquarters in Amsterdam,has reported strong results for Q2. During the period its revenues were 12.1% higher than the same quarter last year, reaching $1 billion (€916.22 million). Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 10.6% to $459 million.
VEON has almost 160 million customers and operations in six countries that are home to more than 7% of the world’s population – Pakistan, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. VEON exited the Russian market in October 2023.
Organic and digital growth
Its CEO, Kaan Terzioğlu (pictured), said the results were due to “robust organic performance across our markets”.
During the quarter VEON attracted 10 million additional 4G customers and has 111 million digital service users, “showcasing our capability to build new businesses in financial, entertainment, healthcare, education and enterprise services,” Terzioğlu said.
He continued: “I am also happy to report for the first time the direct digital revenues generated through our digital financial services, entertainment services, healthcare services, advertising services and Super apps,” which amounted to $108 million in Q2.
This is 83.3% more than a year ago.
The operator group stated it is on target to meet its projected revenue growth for the year of between 16% and 18%, and for EBITDA, increases of between 18% and 20%.
Plans to delist in Amsterdam
The results follow an announcement at the beginning of the month that VEON intends to delist from Euronext Amsterdam and initiate a share buyback programme for up to $100 million
The company said the delisting, and resulting sole listing on Nasdaq, will simplify and streamline the company’s reporting requirements. VEON expects the lelisting process to take place in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Last week the deal was also given unconditional approval by the European Commission – the parties hope to complete later this year or early next
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has won approval from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to go ahead with its planned $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks.
The Commission said “the transaction, as notified, would not significantly reduce competition on such markets. In particular, concerning the horizontal overlaps between the companies’ activities in the market for WLAN equipment, WAPs and Ethernet campus switches.”
It added, “Concerning the conglomerate links between Juniper’s switches and HPE’s activities in the global markets for the supply of high-performance computing…systems and mid-range servers, the Commission found that in the EEA the merged entity would not have the ability to engage in anticompetitive bundling or tying practices.”
When the proposed deal was announced, at a higher price than expected, HPE’s President and CEO, Antonio Neri (pictured), said in a statement, “HPE’s acquisition of Juniper represents an important inflection point in the industry and will change the dynamics in the networking market and provide customers and partners with a new alternative that meets their toughest demands.
“This transaction will strengthen HPE’s position at the nexus of accelerating macro-AI trends, expand our total addressable market, and drive further innovation for customers as we help bridge the AI-native and cloud-native worlds, while also generating significant value for shareholders.”
HPE’s ancestor companies have not always had a happy history with outsize acquisitions and just before the takeover won the Commission’s approval, Juniper Networks reported a 17% fall in its Q2 revenues compared to the previous year to $1.19 billion and a 68% plummet in operating profit to $45 million. On the upside, it said its pipeline is looking healthy.
The companies still have other hurdles to clear but at the moment expect the acquisition to be completed late this year or early in 2025.
Not everybody is happy though. Hannes Gredler, CTO of the edge routing vendor RtBrick groused, “These big acquisitions are becoming the norm…The bottom line is that while HPE has strengthened its market position by acquiring Juniper, it has also left a concerning dent in competition, customer choice and confidence.”
And continued, “Another example is Nokia’s recent $2.3 billion acquisition of Infinera, underscoring the company’s push to dominate the optical network market, boosting its market share and enhancing its competitive edge.
“However, this move also reduces the number of independent vendors in the optical networking space, further consolidating market power among a few large entities and limiting customer choice. Acquisitions of this nature inevitably come with product overlap and resetting priorities by the acquiring company, leaving customers uncertain about the future of their chosen products.”
However, Open RAN revenues are still expected to rise to 15-20% of the global market by 2028
Despite having the full backing of the US government, the global Open RAN market is the antithesis of say, the global AI server market, even with solid progress in some aspects of the market. The envisioned transformation in vendor dynamics appears to be stalling, according to Stefan Pongratz, VP of RAN market research at Dell’Oro.
The analyst firm’s latest report highlights that Open RAN is projected to capture 30-40% of revenues outside China by 2028, with North America leading the adoption. Europe’s Open RAN revenues are expected to rise to 15-20% of the global market by 2028.
Outside the purist Open RAN vision though virtualisation and openness have taken root in most mobile operators which demonstrates that taken together, Open RAN, cloud RAN, and multivendor RAN are poised to hold substantial market shares.
“Open RAN is happening, but this vision that Open RAN will significantly change the vendor dynamics is fading,” said Pongratz. “With most of the leading RAN suppliers now committed to the latest O-RAN fronthaul interfaces, the question now is more about the timing and the adoption curve for the various RAN segments’”
The long-term position remains favourable and mostly unchanged. Despite ongoing challenges, most operators will gradually incorporate more openness, virtualization, intelligence, and automation into their RAN roadmaps. Dell’Oro says the pace will differ slightly between the radios and the baseband, while the multi-vendor RAN business case is less compelling.
The estimates for open RAN, cloud RAN, and multivendor RAN are mostly unchanged from the beginning of the year. By 2028, they are expected to account for >25%, 20 to 25%, and <10% of the total RAN market, respectively.
The forecast is more favorable outside of China, with Open RAN projected to comprise 30 to 40% of the revenues by 2028. North America was the largest region in 2023 and is expected to lead the broader Open RAN movement throughout the forecast period. The US government has taken Open RAN fervour to its Pacific neighbours as well with Open RAN featuring prominently in bilateral statements and through organisations like the Quad. North America stumbled in 2023 but is set to lead the Open RAN market over the forecast period.
After a slow start, Europe is projected to account for 15 to 20% of worldwide Open RAN revenues by 2028.
5G slowdown seeping through the market
Some of Europe’s slow start can be attributed to the general slowdown of 5G rollouts and this has kicked on to adjacent markets. For example, Dell’Oro Group just lowered the near-term forecast for mobile backhaul transport by approximately 6%. Demand for mobile backhaul transport equipment is now projected to be $24.5 billion over the next five years. This figure represents the cumulative amount of transport systems deployed from 2024 through 2028.
“We believe the 5G build cycle will be more gradual and calculated,” said Dell’Oro VP Jimmy Yu. “Thus, we have transplanted the reduction in mobile backhaul demand forecasted in 2024 and 2025 to the outer years of the forecast time period, creating a more moderate rise in demand over the next five years.”
Demand for mobile backhaul equipment, consisting of both wireless and fibre systems, to be used in 5G networks is now forecast to grow at a five-year compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13%. Use of Wireless Systems for backhaul is projected to grow at a higher rate than fibre Systems in the next five years since more mobile radio deployments are expected to occur in countries that mostly use point-to-point microwave transmission systems for mobile backhaul.
Nokia Drone Networks solution includes 300 Drone-in-a-Box bundles and is designed for public safety and industrial use cases in Switzerland
Swisscom Broadcast has selected Nokia to deploy a nationwide Drones-as-a-Service network across Switzerland. It plans to have 300 Nokia Drone-in-a-Box units ready to deploy for emergency response, perimeter protection and infrastructure inspection. The aim is to improve the safety of public sector workers and promote Industry 4.0 practices.
This will be the second nationwide deployment for Nokia Drone Networks after Belgium’s Citymesh. The vendor claims this highlights how it can modernise digital infrastructure using mission-critical industrial edge computing (MXIE) plus 3GPP technologies for operations requiring beyond line of sight, autonomous operation.
Public safety
As well as proecting first responders’ lives, the remotely operated drones can also help save the lives of those involved in incidents by gathering relevant information within the first minutes of an emergency, boosting first responders’ situational awareness.
Public safety agencies in Switzerland simply request a drone flight from Swisscom Broadcast. The drones are ‘packaged’ with a service portfolio including expertise, compliance, data collection and analysis of the collected data from Nokia and Swisscom Broadcast.
The deployment is expected to be available in all areas of Switzerland. Nokia and Swisscom will continue cooperating with competent regulatory bodies to ensure all operations comply with regulatory frameworks, especially from spectrum and aviation safety standpoints.
Protecting industrial workers
Drones will also boost worker safety within the Swiss industry through applications as inspecting tall or hard-to-reach infrastructure, which removes the need for workers to climb or walk around hazardous areas. As Nokia Drone Networks are an integral part of the Nokia MXIE platform architecture, they enable easy onboarding of additional applications for industrial customers with Edge computing needs, such as creating 3D maps or detecting assets.
The deployment will facilitate reliable Drone-as-a-Service operations at scale in Switzerland with Nokia Drone Networks, a turnkey Drone-in-a-Box solution that integrates the drone, a docking station, a ground control station, a payload with video and thermal cameras, related software, and service components.
The solution uses APIs for integration with, for example, as traffic monitoring systems, video management software, dispatch solutions and industrial inspection and process monitoring systems.
This collaboration with Swisscom Broadcast will also enable industrial use cases, automation and beyond line of sight operations, plus the expansion of 3GPP technologies for drone use in Switzerland.
Dominik Müller, CEO at Swisscom Broadcast, said: “The integration of our existing People Density Tool and our Drone Operations expertise with Nokia’s industrial grade hardware in combination with an open and future proof Software architecture is an important key to support such large-scale projects.”
International operator says the successful proof of concept paves the way for the commercial launch by the end of the year
Sparkle, the international operator, says it has successfully run a proof of concept (PoC) for Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) for a quantum-safe internet use case.
It was carried out in collaboration with Adtran, Arqit Quantum and Intel, supported by Telsy, which specialises in cybersecurity and like Sparkle is part of the TIM Group.
The trial was carried out on Sparkle’s metropolitan fibre network in Athens and demonstrated a fully automated implementation of an on-demand MEF Internet Access Service secured by post-quantum cryptography. Sparkle says it is planning the commercial launch of its NaaS/Quantum-Safe Internet (NaaS/QSI) later this year.
Other use cases running on Sparkle’s Naas Suite will progressively follow.
Building on earlier work
This PoC follows an earlier trial carried out on an International VPN between Italy and Germany. Sparkle tested the instantiation of a NaaS solution composed by on-demand networking and security capabilities, leveraging Adtran’s Ensemble cloud-based orchestration and automation software solution.
Power of partnerships
The operator integrated connectivity functions with Arqit’s quantum-safe encryption embedded on an Intel-powered NetSec accelerator card which was used as Universal Customer Premises Equipment (uCPE),
Daniele Mancuso, Chief Marketing & Product Management at Sparkle, said, “Our NaaS vision is rooted in the belief that connectivity should be seamless, ubiquitous, secure and adaptable. We envision a world where businesses can effortlessly scale their Wide Area Networks, adapting to changing demands with agility and precision.
“NaaS enables this by offering flexible, on-demand network services that are easily customizable to meet the unique needs of each customer. Whether it’s expanding bandwidth during peak times, ensuring low latency for critical applications, or providing secure connections for sensitive data, Sparkle’s NaaS solutions are designed to deliver unparalleled performance and reliability”.
This is on a 2.7% rise in revenues of KRW4.42 trillion (€294 billion)
There’s a lot of rubbish talked about AI in telecoms, so some empirical evidence of it in action is most welcome. Eleven months after Korea’s SK Telecom laid out its AI Pyramid Strategy “to become a global AI company” it seems to be paying off.
Most interesting is that it has just announced a 16% increase in operating profits to KRW537.5 billion (€357.68 million) for Q2 on revenues (to the end of June) that increased by 2.7% to KRW 4.42 trillion. In a world where operators’ revenues seem stuck at low-single digit growth, the profit margin is critical.
According to SKT, the growth was due to “higher performance in the mobile and fixed telecommunications business of SKT and its major affiliates”. Also, revenues from enterprise customers grew by 11% year on year to KRW434.2 billion “fuelled by higher datacentre utilisation and increased cloud orders.”
At the end of Q2, SKT had 16.23 million 5G customers – about 70% of its mobile customers – plus slightly more than 7 million fixed broadband subscribers and 9.6 million for pay-TV.
B2B AI strategy and investment
It has also signed up what it calls “its first AI cloud order from domestic internet service providers” during the quarter and “plans to scale up its AI cloud business significantly.”
They said in a statement: “SKT and SGH also intend to leverage their complementary capabilities to enhance customer offerings in the development of differentiated global end-to-end AI factory and data center solutions and services, advanced memory market products and services, and NPU-based AI edge servers.”
SKT’s CFO, Kim Yang-seob promised at the Q2 earnings report that the company will “showcase our progress as an AI company in the second half of the year”.
Partner content: Operators help save many lives but they need to upgrade their disaster management as the frequency and severity of natural and human-made disasters escalates
Telecom operators are the backbone of our society. They connect the world, and we can’t live without the mobile and fixed connectivity we have today. Additionally, and often without anyone noticing, they play a crucial role in our security and health, with emergency communications literally saving lives.
However, we also live in an era where the frequency and severity of natural and human-made disasters are escalating. To give an order of magnitude for this problem, we present the following data:
“The number of disasters has increased by a factor of five over the 50-year period: whereas 711 disasters were recorded for 1970-1979, 3536 were recorded in 2000-2009” (ourworldindata.org).
“The data shows that countries with limited to moderate multi-hazard early warning systems coverage have nearly six times higher disaster-related mortality ratios compared to those in countries with substantial to comprehensive coverage” (undrr.org).
“More than half the global population – around 4.5 billion people – are at high risk of experiencing an extreme weather event, such as a flood, drought, cyclone, or heatwave” (worldbank.org).
The approach to disaster management needs a significant upgrade, and that’s why the introduction of Virtual Command Centers as a Service (VCCaaS) is set to revolutionise how telecom operators and public safety stakeholders manage and coordinate disaster responses. By using state-of-the-art technology such as AI and digital twins, VCCaaS will enhance operational efficiency, improve situational awareness for civilians and emergency workers, and ultimately save lives.
This idea was proposed by a group of operators and vendors who collaborated to transform it into reality. This ongoing journey has passed through various catalyst phases, and this year, in phase V, a demo was created and recognised at DTW24 with the prize of “Outstanding Catalyst, Tech for Good”. The project brought together Celfocus, Antel, Chunghwa Telecom, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Esri, Futurewei Technologies, Infosim, Intersec, MTN, NTT Group, Orange, Telecom Italia, UBique and Verizon Communications.
How is VCCaaS being implemented?
This solution must give networks “superpowers” of agility and resilience, delivering emergency services with a real-time 360° view of field operations. VCCaaS addresses this need by offering situational awareness and crisis management from a central, mutualised location with real-time predictability and mass alerting capabilities.
VCCaaS leverages several advanced technologies to enhance disaster management capabilities:
AI for Risk Prediction: Proactively forecasts potential disaster impacts, enabling preventive measures.
Digital Twins: Provides a comprehensive 360° view of situations, facilitating real-time assessment and decision-making. This virtual representation of the physical environment aids in effective monitoring and planning.
GIS & Location Intelligence: Enhances situational awareness by enabling live positioning of assets, ensuring optimal resource deployment.
These technologies collectively streamline disaster management, reduce response times, and improve coordination, leading to more efficient disaster recovery. For instance, the network can predict where a fire will propagate, advise populations, rearrange connectivity to guarantee communication for firefighters, and provide them with data-driven decisions.
While AI and state-of-the-art technology are crucial for this success, the key to this achievement has been the collaboration and the architecture defined between different operators and partners – each one was focused on their challenge but 100% aligned with the global vision, always sharing different perspectives that enriched the solution.
Use Cases and Advantages
For this catalyst, we focused on two use cases, demonstrating its versatility and effectiveness:
Operational Efficiency: Enhances emergency service operations by providing a predictive centralised platform for coordination and communication, ensuring all teams are synchronised for a quick and effective response while maintaining the network’s functionality.
Early Warning Systems: Provides timely public alerts, crucial for minimising disaster impact. By issuing early warnings, VCCaaS helps mitigate the effects of disasters and saves lives.
Implementing VCCaaS can reduce disaster-induced damage by up to 30% when early warnings are issued within 24 hours. Globally, this could result in avoiding losses of $3-16 billion annually, highlighting VCCaaS’s significant impact on disaster management and recovery efforts.
Collaborative Efforts for Success
Achieving the full potential of VCCaaS requires robust collaboration between the public and private sectors. Collective efforts towards standardisation, security, and skill development are essential for driving this transformation. The catalyst project exemplifies this collaborative spirit, bringing together a multinational team to effectively develop and deploy VCCaaS.
This collaboration extends beyond development. Continuous cooperation is necessary to ensure the system remains effective and up-to-date with the latest technological advancements. By working together, stakeholders can create a more resilient and responsive disaster management system that benefits everyone.
The Path Forward
Transitioning to VCCaaS marks a significant shift in disaster management, offering numerous benefits, including enhanced operational efficiency, improved coordination, and reduced disaster impact. By embracing these technologies, telecom operators and public safety stakeholders can better prepare for and respond to disasters, ultimately safeguarding lives and property.
As VCCaaS enters its fifth phase, its mission to develop a disaster-handling virtual command center continues to grow. The integration of AI with autonomous networks and digital twins into a single interface offers a comprehensive real-time view of operations, assets, and infrastructure. This development ensures that critical infrastructure and resources, such as power grids, transportation networks, and healthcare facilities, are monitored and managed efficiently from a central location.
Real-time situational awareness and mass alerting capabilities integrated into the VCC will play a crucial role in ensuring timely responses and minimising the impact of emergencies on communities. The VCC will enable emergency management teams to access critical data at any time, regardless of their location, providing a 360-degree view of unfolding situations and remaining assets. This real-time data will inform the allocation of emergency services in the field, improving the overall effectiveness of disaster response efforts.
The effectiveness of the VCC will be measured by key performance indicators related to the operational efficiency of emergency services, such as activation time, response time, communication effectiveness, resource allocation, predictive analysis, and consistency of response. As VCCs become established and AI systems support predictive analysis, emergency services won’t need to start from scratch for each incident, leading to standardisation of emergency response procedures, efficient execution, and lives saved.
We, Celfocus, as a key contributor, will continue this journey to help the VCCaaS project succeed. We will use our Analytics and Cognitive knowledge and experience to make a difference in the future of disaster management. We have a drive for all of this: to create a safer, more resilient world, where communities are better prepared to face the challenges of tomorrow.
For more information on VCCaaS and its implementation, visit TM Forum Catalyst Projects here.
About the author
André Vieira is the Operational Intelligence Offer Lead at Celfocus. He started his career providing consulting and engineering services in telecommunications, developing and leading several projects focused on Telcos across Europe, Africa, and Asia. In 2021, he joined Celfocus to manage the Celfocus Order Management Product. He refined product offerings and managed customer relationships and partnerships. He is now leading the offer of a Business Unit – Operational Intelligence – that combines technologies and professional services that speed up the delivery of the foundations of digital transformation while leveraging the Telecom Operator ecosystem. Since February 2023, he has also been the leader of the communication and adoption working group for Project Sylva, a Linux Foundation Europe project.
Like a similar deal between the US and Finland, the countries have agreed to explore possibilities to create a joint ecosystem for R&D in 6G technology and applications
The Swedish and US governments have signed a bilateral deal to work together on developing 6G technologies. The two stated that international cooperation, including partnerships with the private sector, is crucial for developing open and interoperable technologies like open radio access networks and sustainable 6G. They added that this approach aims to ensure that 6G is resilient, secure, safe, trustworthy, inclusive, and sustainable, as highlighted in the Joint Statement Endorsing Principles for 6G and the US-EU Trade and Technology Council’s 6G Vision.
The agreement will see the countries identifying synergies and exploring possibilities to create a joint ecosystem for research and development in 6G technology and applications by making use of new spectrum allocations by future wireless services/technologies and introducing new technologies in existing frequency bands. The two will also encourage global harmonization of frequency bands for 6G and next generations wireless services.
The two will explore possibilities for long-term research collaboration, including potential funding for relevant bilateral research collaboration, in many areas related to 6G and beyond, including: resiliency, security, trust and privacy; machine learning and AI-enabled technologies; efficient use of communication and computing resources, materials, cybersecurity, edge computing, algorithms, distributed intelligence, and data resources; attaining sustainability; addressing spectrum issues; and encouraging the joint use and establishment of test beds, open architectures, advanced micro-electronics, dynamic spectrum management, optical science and network and computer science.
In April, the Swedish Research Council and Vinnova signed a five-year declaration of intent with the US National Science Foundation (NSF), to facilitate research and innovation collaborations between Sweden and US and 6G was already identified as one of the key technology areas.
At the time, Swedish Government said it was also making a specific investment in research and innovation in 6G and was giving the Swedish Research Council and Vinnova SEK 390 million to distribute within the area during 2024–2026, of which the Swedish Research Council was awarded SEK 140 million.
Finns first
The agreement with Finland was made in June last year and both agreements demonstrate the importance of Nokia and Ericsson – and related ecosystems – in US thinking. As the technology world continues to diverge along geopolitical lines, 6G standardisation is the next battleground. In addition to signing the US agreement, Finland also leads the European 6G flagship initiative, Hexa-X-II funded by EU and plays a significant role in other 6G measures of the EU as well.
Supporting pathways
Sweden and the US will use the agreement to cooperate in scientific research, standardisation, technology development and innovation. This will include promoting avenues to encourage a broad and inclusive 6G ecosystem to facilitate multidisciplinary research for fundamental discoveries and diverse applications.
Harking back to the political agenda the agreement will also see the two promoting policies for facilitating the “open and robust exchange ideas to establish a resilient and skilled workforce for research and technology development”, within academia, government, or the private sector. This includes promoting policies and mechanisms for facilitating the use and joint experimentation with large-scale wireless 6G testbeds.
Unfortunately, there is no word in the agreement on whether the countries would standardise on moose or elk.
Last month the country’s competition authority barred Vodafone from acquiring Nowo after a protracted investigation into the effects on competition
Romania’s Digi Communications is looking to expand operations in Portugal with the acquisition of that country’s fourth largest operator, Nowo Communications for €150 million.
Digi will acquire Cabonitel, owner of Nowo. The latter has 270,000 mobile customers and 130,000 customers for its pay-TV and broadband services. Nowo has spectrum licences in the 1800MHz, 2.6GHz and 3.6GHz bands.
Digi must gain regulatory approvals to acquire Nowo but its chances seem better as it is already investing in its own fibre access network infrastructure in Portugal and it is strengthening the fourth operator which the competition authority saw as essential in the market.
Digi also has plans to launch in the moribund Belgian market which it is expected to confirm when it announces it half year earnings in a few days’ time. They will be very interesting, given the impressive results the Romanian group reported it had doubled its profits at the end of the last quarter.
Vodafone Portugal was recently denied the right to acquire Nowoafter the competition regulator, Autoridade da Concorrência (AdC), decided it would not further competition in the market. In other words, it viewed Nowo as key in keeping the prices of its three larger rivals down.
Had it been allowed to proceed, Vodafone would have become Portugal’s second largest provider. As that route is permanently closed, maybe Portugal will become the third European market that Vodafone bails out of, having already exited Spain (selling out to Zegona Communications) and Italy (to Swisscom’s Italian subsidiary Fastweb) this year on the grounds they lacked sufficient scale to make a return on investment.
Saudi Arabia’s stc is looking to strengthen its presence in the Iberian peninsula. It already holds almost a 10% stake in Spain’s incumbent, Telefonica and was interested in acquiring incumbent Altice Portugal, but the two parties could not agree terms and negotiations ended last month, when it was reported in local media that stc was potentially interested in acquiring Vodafone’s Portuguese opco.
