Vodafone Group has seemingly been quite active on the M&A front in recent months, with two separate stories coming to light this week suggesting they have sought to make market-shaking acquisitions in both the UK and Italy.
Bloomberg reports that Vodafone was exploring the possibility of purchasing Three UK with the latter’s parent company, CK Hutchison, late last year.
In November last year, Vodafone’s Group CEO Nick Read said he was “firmly supportive of consolidation on the right terms”, suggesting that a merger with Three would make sense for the UK market…
IHS Towers grabs more Brazilian towers with SP5 acquisition
IHS Towers, one of the largest independent owners, operators, and developers of shared telecommunications infrastructure in the world by tower count, has signed an agreement to acquire São Paulo Cinco Locação de Torres Ltda. (“SP5”), a Grupo Torresur (“GTS”) portfolio company. GTS is one of the leading providers of telecommunications infrastructure in Brazil and SP5’s portfolio includes 2,115 telecommunication towers across Brazil…
New TIM CEO reignites Italian single network hopes
On Friday, Italian incumbent operator TIM announced that they had selected Pietro Labriola to replace the outgoing Luigi Gubitosi as Group CEO.
Labriola, who had served as the CEO of TIM Brasil for three years, was considered the frontrunner for the position, having quickly secured the backing of both Vivendi, TIM’s largest individual shareholder, and Italian state investment bank Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP).
The change-up dates back to November, when private investment firm KKR first offered to takeover TIM for roughly $12 billion…
CityFibre FTTP Broadband Finally Goes Live in Gloucester UK
After a long wait, CityFibre has announced that their £31m project to deploy a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across the city of Gloucester (Gloucestershire, England) has finally started to go live and connect the first local homes and businesses. The Gloucester build, which is supported by the Kier Group, started […]
Virgin Media O2 UK Starts Trial to Tackle Vandalised Cabinets
A new 6-month long trial has been launched by broadband ISP and mobile operator Virgin Media (VMO2) in the City of York, which will see the provider working alongside the city council to repaint vandalised street cabinets and bring them back to their original state. Sadly, vandalism and graffiti remain an all-too-common problem for telecoms […]
Vodafone UK Allegedly Expressed Interest in Three UK Merger
Mobile operator Vodafone UK is allegedly reported to have explored a move to merge with rival Three UK by acquiring them from parent CK Hutchison Holdings. But the expression of interest, which is said to have been made last year, did not lead to an agreement and is no longer part of active negotiations. At […]
DCMS Committee Finds Online Safety Bill Gets the Balance Wrong
A new cross-party UK report from the DCMS Select Committee has warned that the Government’s new Online Safety Bill (OSB), which will task Ofcom with tackling “harmful” content online, fails to get the balance right and “neither protects freedom of expression nor is it clear nor robust enough to tackle illegal and harmful online content.” […]
How Not to Fix an Address Problem – Openreach’s Comical Gaffe
Openreach made a somewhat comical gaffe this week after they told an end-user, who lives in a copper “stop sell” area and was trying to order a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband service, that the best way to resolve a problem with getting his UK address recognised was to “place an order for a telephone service only“. […]
Mobile Operator EE UK Confirms Closure of 3G Signal Box Service
Mobile operator EE has quietly confirmed that their indoor femtocell based signal booster device (‘Signal Box‘), which used an existing fixed line broadband ISP connection to create its own indoor 3G mobile signal over a specific band (e.g. 2100MHz), will be “fully closed” (for existing customers) by 30th June 2022. The move does not come […]
Rival UK ISP Fibrus Criticises BT Over Broadband Price Hikes
The CEO of Infracapital backed broadband ISP Fibrus, Dominic Kearns, has said he’s “horrified” at BT’s recent 9.3% price hike (here) and, unlike the incumbent, pledges that they “will not be putting our prices up.” The provider is currently building a new full fibre network across parts of Northern Ireland and Northern England. We should […]