News

Two years after Cellnex first agreed to buy CK Hutchison’s mobile towers in the UK, the deal is finally set to move forward

Back in 2020, Spanish infrastructure giant Cellnex announced the signing of a €10 billion deal with CK Hutchison, aiming to purchase roughly 24,600 mobile tower assets in numerous European markets.

But while this deal was finalised without a hitch in five of the six countries involved – Italy, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, and Ireland – in the UK the move proved far more contentious.

In May 2021, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said that it was launching an investigation into the deal, suggesting that the acquisition of these additional UK towers would make Cellnex’s already market-leading position in the UK dangerously unassailable.

As the investigation progressed, numerous parts of the UK telecoms market spoke out against the deal, with BT being particularly vocal in September, saying that the move would “inevitably lead to higher prices for the services offered by Cellnex to BT and other UK wireless operators”.

By the end of 2021, the CMA was already considering “structural remedies” to the deal, suggesting that they would introduce requirements for Cellnex to offload some of its existing tower infrastructure in the areas that overlapped with CK Hutchison’s towers. This was ultimately confirmed in March 2022, when the CMA gave the deal the green light on condition that around 1,000 sites be offloaded to a third party.

Cellnex and the CMA agreed terms in May this year, and this week Cellnex is upholding their end of the bargain, announcing that they will divest of around 1,100 sites to Wireless Infrastructure Group (WIG).

WIG is one of the UK’s leading mobile infrastructure-as-a-service providers and is backed by Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, one of the largest global infrastructure investors.

“The divestiture agreement reached with WIG allows us to meet the conditions required by the UK Competition and Markets Authority and to proceed to complete the UK CK Hutchison transaction, the last of the deals announced in November 2020 to integrate the global CK Hutchison’s telecommunications sites in six European countries,” said Àlex Mestre, Deputy CEO of Cellnex Telecom.

Financial details of the acquisition by WIG were not announced.

Cellnex said it expects the transaction with WIG to be completed by the end of the year and that with CK Hutchison to take place in ‘early/mid-November’.

How is the neutral host market changing across Europe? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s live Total Telecom Congress

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The post Cellnex hands 1,100 sites to Wireless Infrastructure Group to appease CMA first appeared on Total Telecom.

British satellite operator OneWeb, which is partly owned by the UK Government, has confirmed their return to flight after successfully launching 36 of their compact Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based ultrafast broadband satellites aboard a LVM3 rocket from the NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) facility in Sriharikota, India. The operator has previously lofted 428 of their […]

Broadband ISP WightFibre, which operates a full fibre (FTTP) network across the Isle of Wight – just off the South Coast of Hampshire in England, has revealed that it too has a social tariff for those on benefits, which will give you an unlimited 100Mbps (symmetric) speed for just £16.50 per month with a PAYG […]

Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark (TUD) have done something quite remarkable by demonstrating a record data transmission speed of 1.84 Pbps (Petabits per second) – or 1,840Tbps (Terabits per second) if you prefer – over a single 37-core and 7.9km long fibre optic cable. Oh.. and they could go a lot faster. Just […]

Network operator Freedom Fibre, which is currently deploying a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across parts of England (Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Shropshire) and North Wales, has kindly provided ISPreview with a map that helps to visualise their current and future rollout plan. Many of Freedom Fibre’s initial deployments are currently taking place in […]

NEWS

Roughly 500 employees are being laid off and the company’s network expansion paused due to economic pressures

Starry was formed back in 2016, aiming to use fixed wireless access (FWA) technology to deliver home internet to customers in various parts of the US. Since then, the company has gone from strength the strength, leading the company to make an initial public offering (IPO) via a special acquisition company (SPAC) earlier this year; the move raised around $176 million, with the business being valued at $1.7 billion.

Now, just six months later, Starry has announced that it is taking drastic cost cutting measures to secure the business’s future.

In a statement, company CEO Chet Kanojia said that the “extremely difficult economic climate and capital environment” had led the company to pause its network expansion and lay off half of its employees, roughly 500 people.

The company says it will instead focus on increasing penetration in its existing footprint.

“We, like so many others, are making the difficult calls now and taking steps that will allow us to be laser-focused on financing the business over the long-term and continue serving our markets,” said Kanojia.

The extent of the company’s financial troubles is for now unclear, with additional financial results expected to be reported on the 2nd of November.

It would appear, however, that a major pain point for the company has been the uptake of its services; despite Starry’s services being available to just shy of 6 million homes across the US, the company says it has just 91,000 customers.

It is also worth noting that Starry will no longer be fulfilling its obligations as part of the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, through which it had won $269 million in grants to deliver rural connectivity.

How is the global economic climate impacting the US telecoms sector? Join the industry in discussion at the inaugural Connected America conference

Also in the news:
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The post A falling star? Wireless ISP Starry to cut workforce in half amid money woes first appeared on Total Telecom.

NEWS

The Thai telecoms regulator has declined to halt the $7.3 billion merger of True Corp and Total Access Communications (DTAC), a move that will create the country’s largest mobile operator

This week, almost a year after the merger between DTAC and True was first announced, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunication Commission (NBTC) of Thailand has finally given the deal its approval.

The merger will see DTAC’s 19 million subscribers combined with True’s 32 million, overtaking the current market leader, Advanced Info Service (AIS), which has around 44 million subscribers. Thailand’s fourth-place telco, the state-owned National Telecom, has a market share of less than 5%.

As a result of the merger, the Thai mobile market will essentially be turned into a duopoly, with a myriad of critics complaining over the past year that the deal will harm customers by reducing their choice and driving up prices.

DTAC and True have said previously that they have no intention of raising prices, suggesting that the merger will help prevent overbuild and maximise the pair’s combined spectrum holdings for 5G.

In an effort mitigate competition concerns, the NBTC has imposed numerous conditions on the merger, including a price ceiling and price controls, as well as an independent verification of cost structure and service fee for at least five years.

Whether or not these conditions prove enough to ensure market competition remains to be seen. In fact, it seems the NBTC’s decision to permit the merger remains contentious right down to the final vote, with Thai news sources suggesting that the final vote was 3–2 in favour, following a special meeting that lasted 11 hours.

Opposition groups are already preparing legal challenges over the merger’s legality, with the Thailand Consumer Council saying it plans to file a complaint with the Administrative Court.

DTAC and True have not released a statement, but public filings suggest that intend to list the newly merged company, for now named NewCo, on the Stock Exchange of Thailand in November.

Also in the news:
The missing 3.2 billion…
New EXA investment serves customers across the Iberian peninsula
Startup stories: Facing up to cybersecurity risks

The post True–DTAC merger to go ahead despite opposition first appeared on Total Telecom.

Ofcom’s 2022 study of fixed line home broadband ISP speeds has reported that the average (median) UK download rate has risen from 50.4Mbps last year to 59.4Mbps now (uploads went from 9.8Mbps to 10.7Mbps). But the performance gap between rural and urban areas has “widened” (unsurprising with so much urban FTTP build). The regulator’s study […]

Some business customers of broadband ISP Virgin Media Business UK (VMO2) are now reporting that they too have seen a modest uplift in upload speeds over the past week, which suggests that the forthcoming speed boosts won’t be limited to those on Virgin Media’s residential M100 and M200 packages. Back in August 2022 we reported […]

Ofcom has today published new proposals to soften some of the UK’s existing Net Neutrality protection rules, which were established some years ago to ensure no serious blocking or slowing of access to legal websites or other internet services by broadband ISPs and mobile network operators. But there are some positive statements too. Back in […]