Abertis’ (referred to in this article as Cellnex following an IPO of Abertis’ tower business in May 2015) deal with Wind was announced formally in early March, during Mobile World Congress 2015. Amongst the hubbub of product launches and Silicon Valley celebrities, a deal for the acquisition of telecoms towers in Italy might not seem headline news, but if you dig deeper this announcement could well mark the beginning of something rather exciting for the European market. Thus far slow to transfer assets from operator-captive to third party towercos, Europe has lacked a truly international force to champion the towerco model which has worked with such success in the US, Africa, Asia and Latin America.
A new breed of European towerco
