Vodafone’s Portugal buy could raise regulatory eyebrows
Vodafone has agreed to acquire Portuguese mobile operator Nowo in a deal clearly designed to help it build some scale in the country.
Vodafone has agreed to acquire Portuguese mobile operator Nowo in a deal clearly designed to help it build some scale in the country.
After a long yawn-out auction of 5G-friendly spectrum, Joao Cadete says operators in Portugal are revving up for commercial launch.
Portugal’s telecoms regulator is taking further action to drive progress in the country’s never-ending 5G spectrum auction.
It has been reported that French telecoms conglomerate Altice wants to raise a few euros by selling what’s left of the Portuguese business it acquired in 2014.
Progress in Portugal’s controversial 5G spectrum auction has been so slow that the regulator has been forced to change the rules to enable more bidding rounds per day.
Portugal has concluded the first part of its latest spectrum auction and it appears Masmovil has come out on top and will therefore become the country’s new mobile network operator.
Vodafone CEO Nick Read on Monday indicated that his company will continue to fight against what it perceives to be unfair 5G licensing conditions in Portugal: there is more work to come for the lawyers.
Nick Read reckons there’s not enough competition in Italy, but too much in Portugal and the Czech Republic, all countries in which Vodafone does business.
Ambitious Spanish tower specialist Cellnex is going to drop at least €375 million to the towering operations of operator NOS.
Cellnex has expanded its European footprint once again through the acquisition of Omtel, taking the infrastructure giants into the Portuguese market.
Altice has struck a deal with US investment bank Morgan Stanley which will see its Portuguese unit create a nationwide wholesale business.
Portugal is the latest western country to say it won’t ban Huawei from its 5G network, while Telefónica Spain is using Huawei for its 5G core.
While the investment climate for connectivity infrastructure has certainly been improving in recent years, a proactive and prioritised government is critical to ensure rapid evolution to the digital economy.
Debt-riddled French telco conglomerate Altice has raised some much-needed cash by selling stakes in two of its tower holdings to private equity.
Cisco has followed up a successful week in Spain by signing a memorandum of understanding with its neighbour Portugal.
The Vodafone Group has started rolling out fibre to the home (FTTH) programmes in Ireland and Portugal as part of a €600 million network expansion programme.
Vodafone this week closed the acquisition of private equity-owned Spanish cable operator Ono for which it paid €7.2bn. Ono offers high speed broadband and pay TV services in Spain and Vodafone said that the transaction will accelerate its unified communications strategy “in a highly converged European market”.
French incumbent Orange has launched a partnership programme through which it intends to offer scale benefits and wholesale services to smaller operators. The first operators to sign up to the Orange Alliance programme are French-Polynesian firm Vini and third-placed Portuguese player Zon Optimus.
Portuguese business assurance specialist WeDo Technologies has announced a partnership with incumbent operator Portugal Telecom (PT) that will see the firm’s rating validation and roaming management solutions offered on a SaaS model as part of PT’s new enterprise cloud offering, SmartCloudPT.
Brazilian operator Oi and its largest shareholder Portugal Telecom have agreed to merge into a combined entity called CorpCo. The deal is expected to enable CorpCo to generate operational and financial synergies, with a net present value (NPV) of approximately R$5.5bn ($2.5bn) and benefit from increased scale.