The Italian market has seen a host of different tower monetisation strategies by its resident operators. The first operator to monetise its portfolio was Wind (at the time owned by Vimpelcom) who carried out a sale and leaseback transaction of their portfolio of 7,377 towers (which it had carved into “Galata Towers”) to Cellnex back in 2015, originally retaining a 10% stake (with Cellnex taking over the operator’s 10% stake in 2017).
The same year, TIM, the mobile arm of Telecom Italia, carved out its tower portfolio into a dedicated infrastructure unit, INWIT and listed a 40% stake on the Milan Stock Exchange, raising €875.3mn in the process.
In 2016, VimpelCom’s Wind and CK Hutchison’s 3 merged to form Wind Tre, with the merger being approved on the condition that spectrum and towers were provided to a new market entrant to ensure competition. This opened the door to France’s Iliad who entered the market in 2018 with an aggressive low-cost strategy. In May 2019, Iliad became the second operator to carry out a sale and leaseback transaction in the country, reaching a deal to sell its 2,200 sites to Cellnex for €600mn (Iliad/Salt also agreed the sale of its French and Swiss tower portfolios to Cellnex at the same time). The deal also included a build to suit component for an extra cash consideration, with Cellnex to build up to 1,000 new towers for the operator.
In July 2019 Vodafone combined its 11,000 tower portfolio with TIM’s INWIT (with the two operators also putting in place an active sharing agreement). Since the merger, Vodafone and TIM reduced their respective shareholdings in the towerco from 37.5% to 33.2% (with Vodafone’s shareholding held by their towerco, Vantage Towers). TIM has subsequently reduced and sold remaining stakes in the holding company Daphne 3 (which in turn owns 29.9% of INWIT) to Ardian-led consortium Impulse. TIM’s moves are aimed at improving cash flow.
In July 2021, INWIT reached a €70mn deal to acquire fromVodafone Italia 700 antenna systems covering road and motorway tunnels as well as 40 DAS systems covering hotels, stadiums and offices. In addition to consolidating existing infrastructure from TIM and Vodafone, INWIT has first refusal on new build for the two operators with a target
of building a total of 10,000 new macro sites and small cells in its initial scope. INWIT (in conjunction with TIM and Vodafone) has also won a government tender to deploy sites in 2,000 rural locations.
In August of 2019, Hutchison announced that it planned to carve its 28,500 European towers into its a towerco unit, CKH Networks. This news was then superseded by the announcement in November 2020 that Hutchison had signed a deal to sell their European tower portfolio to Cellnex. The Italian portion of the deal added 8,900 existing sites to Cellnex’ portfolio, as well as a BTS pipeline of 1,100 sites.
Cellnex entered the Italian market in 2014, buying TowerCo (the operator which managed towers along the Italian motorway network) and its 306 sites from Atlantia.
In addition to acquiring the TowerCo, Wind, Iliad and Hutchison towers, Cellnex also acquired Italian small cells and DAS player, CommsCon back in 2016 and has been highly active in the small cells and DAS space.
In addition to Cellnex, there is a long tail of smaller independent towercos active in Italy. Phoenix Tower International entered the Italian market with the acquisition of Towertel from EI Towers (in conjunction with F2i). As part of the deal, PTI secured the rights to market and lease 1,600 of EI Towers’ 2,300 broadcast sites. After PTI, HighTel is the next largest towerco in the Italian market with a portfolio of around 300 sites.
In early 2023 Wind Tre and Iliad announced the set-up of their 5G network sharing JV Zefiro Net that will cover 26.8% of Italian population living in rural areas. The pair will share the cost and management of mobile networks in the country’s rural areas. In May 2023 Wind Tre announced the carve out and sale of its mobile and fixed network to EQT Infrastructure for an enterprise value of EUR 3.4bn. A year later the deal was cancelled due to separate network agreements with “with relevant third parties” according to Hutchinson. In addition to EI Towers having a portfolio of 2,300 broadcast sites, Rai Way too owns an almost identically sized portfolio of broadcast assets.
Vodafone has agreed to sell its Italian business to Swisscom for EUR8bn as part of plans to streamline European operations. Swisscom intends to merge Vodafone Italia with Fastweb, Swisscom’s Milan-based subsidiary, a move aimed at strengthening its presence in the country and pushing fixed-mobile convergence. The deal will complete the transition of Fastweb from MVNO to national MNO and the mobile market will continue to have four MNOs.
