Vodafone are the latest in a snowballing number of European MNOs to state their interest in monetising their towers, hoping to reduce their €31bn debt burden through the sale of a stake in a new ’virtual towerco’ encompassing 58,000 towers across the continent. They follow European MNOs Altice, Sunrise, Bouygues, KPN, Telefónica, Deutsche Telekom, Turkcell and Telecom Italia in seeking to monetise their tower assets. With several different monetisation models already in place, we look at the options available to European MNOs and anticipate which route Vodafone might choose for their assets.
What has been proposed?
Vodafone’s CEO, Nick Read, put the cat among the pigeons by mooting potentially the biggest tower sale in European history in September 2018.
