The European Commission has cleared the merger of Vodafone Italy’s towers with INWIT’s passive network infrastructure, creating Europe’s second largest listed tower company with over 22,000 towers.
Vodafone and TIM have offered commitments to support access to INWIT’s passive infrastructure by all market participants.
INWIT will make space available to third parties on 4,000 of its towers in more urbanised areas while committing to preserving existing tenancies. INWIT can maximise tower utilisation while preserving the ability of Vodafone and TIM to efficiently roll out their respective 5G networks.
The European Commission has confirmed that it is supportive of Vodafone and TIM’s plans to share active network equipment outside of major cities, allowing a faster deployment of 5G over a wider geographic area, at a lower cost. The active sharing partnership will exclude municipalities with populations of over 100,000 inhabitants, as well as their more densely populated suburbs.
Vodafone will receive €2,140 million, as announced in July 2019, and both Vodafone and TIM will each hold a 37.5 percent shareholding in INWIT.
