TowerXchange’s first visit to Myanmar was in 2014, when the tower market was just beginning to take shape with the opening of the market to foreign operators. In March 2017, TowerXchange’s Head of Asia hit the ground in Yangon and took 13 meetings over the course of the week, connecting with industry stakeholders who are…...
Keith Boyd has been a leader of the African tower industry since before there was a tower industry! Over 15 years spanning Plessey, Venture Communications and Eaton Towers, Keith has become a respected authority on South African towers, and he’ll again be hosting a round table devoted to the country at the forthcoming TowerXchange Meetup…...
Laurent Viviez has over 15 years consulting experience in telecoms. For the last 5 years he’s focused on Africa, working with most of the major telcos, equipment and handset manufacturers on projects as diverse as pricing, distribution, m-payments, cost-efficiency, and network outsourcing. In the tower space, Laurent has worked for several large operators on network…...
French media group NRJ has announced its intention to sell broadcast towerco Towercast, a competitor to TDF, which offers DTT and FM broadcast services via 500 sites across France. Declaring that Towercast isn’t a ‘fit’ with NRJ’s core business, it’s believed NRJ hopes to raise up to €300mn from the sale. TowerXchange takes a look…...
It’s been a relatively quiet summer in European towers, with only Cellnex (who else?) adding to their portfolio through consolidation of their position in the Dutch market. Cellnex’s recently announced acquisition of Dutch towerco Alticom for €133mn not only rolls up one of the the last independent towercos of any scale in the Netherlands, but…...
1,992,467 of Asia’s 3,047,847 towers are owned or operated by towercos representing 65% of the total inventory of assets. Exciting news and developments continue to emerge from the region, with the highlight being edotco’s two announced acquisitions in Pakistan months apart from each other, first in June then late August. The Tower Share (Tanzanite Tower)…...
There are several notable key trends and developments starting to emerge in the African and Middle Eastern tower industry. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where we have long been commenting that the gold rush of major sale and leaseback transactions has now passed, the tower industry is reaching a new level of maturity. Operational excellence and lean…...
Australia: KKR offers to purchase Vocus Group KKR has offered to buy Vocus Group for approximately US$1.6bn. If the deal goes through, KKR would acquire a national fibre network connecting all Australian capitals and key cities in New Zealand. Australia: Vodafone Australia and Telstra battle over technical barriers Vodafone Australia is accusing Telstra of increasing…...
The summer of 2017 marked a significant milestone in Pakistan’s tower market, with edotco successfully executing on the country’s first landmark sale and leaseback (SLB), acquiring Deodar, market-leading MNO Jazz’s carveout towerco. This portfolio of 13,000 towers, along with an earlier acquisition of Towershare’s 700 towers means edotco will now own ~40% of the towers…...
China is home to the world’s largest towerco China Tower Corporation (CTC), as well as a fragmented but good-sized ecosystem of 200+ independent towercos. While the State-owned enterprise remains eager and committed to IPO in Q4 2017, there is chatter this is more more likely to happen in the first quarter of 2018. Estimated tower…...
