Telecom towers have become the target of several big deals as Spain’s Cellnex and U.S.-based American Tower Corp race to increase their European footprint, eyeing the roll-out of 5G technology.
American Tower, which has nearly 200,000 towers globally, has a quarter of that number in Europe, and about 170,000 towers are still owned by mobile network operators.
Here are some of the tower-related announcements since 2020:
February, 2021: Cellnex reaches agreement with Altice and Starlight Holdco to acquire Hivory, which has around 10,500 masts in France, planning an initial investment of 5.2 billion euros ($6.3 billion).
February, 2021: Cellnex announced a 1.6 billion euro deal with Poland’s Cyfrowy Polsat to take over Polkomtel Infrastrukture, which manages around 7,000 masts.
February, 2021: Vodafone plans to float Vantage Towers, its European mobile phone masts business, on the Frankfurt stock exchange in March in a share offering worth about 3 billion euros, three people close to the matter say.
February, 2021: Orange announced the launch of its European masts company TOTEM, which will house its 25,500 towers.
January, 2021: Spanish telecom company Telefonica has agreed to sell its mobile phone masts in Europe and Latin America to U.S.-based telecom infrastructure operator American Towers for 7.7 billion euros in cash.
January, 2021: German telecoms group Deutsche Telekom and Cellnex sa they will combine their tower businesses in the Netherlands and set up a joint fund to invest in digital infrastructure.
November, 2020: Cellnex says it will buy 24,600 towers and sites that CK Hutchison owned in Europe for a total 10 billion euros.
April, 2020: Cellnex sa it had agreed to acquire Portuguese mobile operator NOS’s telecom-tower business for an initial 375 million euros.