This weekend, Orange and Másmovíl have announced that they are officially moving forward with their planned merger to create a 50:50 joint venture in Spain.
The deal values Orange Spain was valued at €7.8 billion and Másmovíl at €10.9 billion, giving the combined entity a market value of €18.6 billion. 
The combined, converged operator would have roughly 7.1 million fixed line customers and 20.2 million mobile subscribers…

This weekend, Orange and Másmovíl have announced that they are officially moving forward with their planned merger to create a 50:50 joint venture in Spain.

The deal values Orange Spain was valued at €7.8 billion and Másmovíl at €10.9 billion, giving the combined entity a market value of €18.6 billion. 

The combined, converged operator would have roughly 7.1 million fixed line customers and 20.2 million mobile subscribers. Its combined fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network would reach over 16 million homes. It would also include around 1.5 million TV customers. 

As such, the operators suggest that the merger will generate around €450 million in synergies over the following three years, with the company saying they expect “significant efficiency gains, allowing the combined company to accelerate investments in FTTH and 5G that will benefit Spanish customers”.

It is also worth noting that the deal also includes provision for a potential initial public offering (IPO) opportunity one or two years after the closing of the deal; the deal would allow both parties to trigger an IPO after a certain time and if certain conditions are met, though Orange will always have the option of taking control of the business at the IPO price.

“The joint venture […] will create a sustainable player with the financial capacity and scale to continue investing to foster the future of infrastructure competition in Spain,” said the companies in a statement. 

The deal comes after many months of speculation, with Másmovíl having been rumoured to be having merger talks with both Vodafone and Movistar, as well as Orange, at various times over the past couple of years. Official discussions with Orange were first revealed back in March and since then the operators have been chasing the requisite financing for the deal, finally securing €6.5 billion from roughly a dozen banks in recent weeks.

The move represents a major shakeup for the highly competitive Spanish telecoms market, combining the second and fourth largest players and creating a new market leader (combined market share roughly 44%), overcoming the current dominance of Telefonica’s Movistar (36%). Vodafone Spain, meanwhile, will be left in a somewhat distant third place, with a market share of only around 20%. 

Vodafone itself had explored merging its operations with Másmovíl numerous times in the past few years, with analysts suggesting that such a coupling would present less concern to regulators than the tie-up with Orange. Nonetheless, Vodafone has said that it approves of the Orange– Másmovíl merger, saying that it will improve the health of the market and attract additional investment. 

Antitrust regulators, however, may be harder to appease. Typically, these regulatory bodies have looked unfavourably at M&A that reduces the number of players in a telecoms market below four and Orange and Másmovíl will likely expect major conditions to be attached by the regulator before the deal is given the green light.

Assuming they receive regulatory approval, Orange and Másmovíl hope to have the deal closed by H2 of 2023.

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Today, Spanish reports suggest that Másmóvil has sold a 51% stake in Euskaltel’s newly separated fibre access network unit, EKT Cable, to a Spanish consortium.  
The consortium, known as Bidasoa Aggregator, includes various Spanish investment funds…

Today, Spanish reports suggest that Másmóvil has sold a 51% stake in Euskaltel’s newly separated fibre access network unit, EKT Cable, to a Spanish consortium.  

The consortium, known as Bidasoa Aggregator, includes various Spanish investment funds, including Asúa Inversiones, Beraunberri, Inveready, and Onchena. 

The deal is reportedly worth around €580 million, of which €500 million will be used to reduce the Másmóvil’s debt load.

According to sources, the move should allow Euskaltel to accelerate its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) rollout in Basque Country, Galicia and Asturias, where the company has targets of migrating 2.1 million people to fibre services and away from older copper infrastructure.

The deal does not include Euskaltel’s trunk fibre network or transmission assets, which will continue to be owned and operated by Másmóvil/Euskaltel.

Másmóvil acquired Basque operator Euskaltel for roughly €2 billion last year, having itself only been acquired back in June 2020 by a trio of private equity funds – KKR, Cinven, and Providence – for $3.3 billion.

Since then, Másmóvil has agreed to merge with Orange Spain, aiming to create a 50:50 joint venture with an enterprise value of roughly €20 billion. Earlier this month, reports suggest that the duo announced they were closing in on the €6.5 billion in funding they would need to complete the merger, with the money being provided by around a dozen major banks.

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Today, reports from Bloomberg suggest that Altice USA has began looking for buyers for its cable operator subsidiary, Suddenlink. 
Altice USA acquired Suddenlink back in 2015, with the deal being valued at around $9 billion. Today, the unit Suddenlink operates fixed TV and broadband internet services in 17 states in the Midwest…

Today, reports from Bloomberg suggest that Altice USA has began looking for buyers for its cable operator subsidiary, Suddenlink. 

Altice USA acquired Suddenlink back in 2015, with the deal being valued at around $9 billion. Today, the unit Suddenlink operates fixed TV and broadband internet services in 17 states in the Midwest, southern and western parts of the US, with analysts suggesting it has around 1.8 million subscribers for its almost four million homes passed. 

The sources suggest that the unit could fetch a price tag of around $20 billion.

Goldman Sachs has been hired to help Altice explore its options. 

The decision to sell Suddenlink should not come as too much of a surprise. Back in May, Alice USA’s CEO, Dexter Goei, noted that he was open to the idea of selling Suddenlink.

“Suddenlink in itself is a great asset, great growth matrices, under-penetrated markets, less competitive areas, despite that it’s very rural,” said Goei. “But strategically, it’s not a footprint that makes you sit there and say ‘Wow, that’s the most strategic footprint out there.’ So are we sellers or restructurers of certain of our assets in other areas outside of Cablevision? We’re always open to listening to people out there if it makes sense for us to trade, swap, sell certain assets.”

In related news, Altice USA is currently in the process of uniting all of its operations under the ‘Optimum’ brand. Earlier this year, Altice made the decision to unite the Suddenlink brand with its larger brand, Optimum, having already rebranded its mobile service, Altice Mobile, to Optimum Mobile back in 2021.  

What would the sale of Suddenlink mean for the US broadband market? Find out from the experts live at the Connected America 2023 conference 

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Rakuten Symphony, Inc., a global leader in cloud-native, Open RAN telco infrastructure platforms, services and solutions, today unveiled plans to establish a new lab in Bengaluru. The Global Innovation Lab is expected to open in early 2023 and will be housed inside new engineering development facilities opening simultaneously to bring together Rakuten Symphony’s Bengaluru employee base.
Tareq Amin, Chief Executive Officer of Rakuten Symphony…

Rakuten Symphony, Inc., a global leader in cloud-native, Open RAN telco infrastructure platforms, services and solutions, today unveiled plans to establish a new lab in Bengaluru. The Global Innovation Lab is expected to open in early 2023 and will be housed inside new engineering development facilities opening simultaneously to bring together Rakuten Symphony’s Bengaluru employee base.

Tareq Amin, Chief Executive Officer of Rakuten Symphony, said, “Our operations around the world are powered by incredible Indian talent and creative innovation, so I am very proud to announce this additional investment with the establishment of our Global Innovation Lab and new engineering development facilities in Bengaluru. I am very confident that as we continue to grow here in India, our ability to provide telco solutions to the world will also grow exponentially.”

The Global Innovation Lab will be a state-of-the art facility that recreates the entire network architecture in a simulated environment, from RAN to Core to transport, enabling function and performance testing. The lab will also act as a showcase for Symworld™ platform, allowing Rakuten Symphony to demonstrate the capabilities and performance of the platform to customers. It will complement and expand upon Rakuten Symphony’s existing RAN lab in Bengaluru and the Rakuten Cloud Innovation Lab in Tokyo, allowing for global end-to-end testing of apps across the Symworld portfolio. Going forward, there are plans to set up facilities for 6G infrastructure R&D in the lab.

Narendra Narayana, Managing Director of Rakuten Symphony India said, “Rakuten Symphony India represents a key driver of innovation in the telecom space, and we are very excited to further expand our presence. We look forward to fostering local talent and working with local Indian and global partners to promote the adoption of Open RAN technologies and empower global telecom operators to build and operate secure mobile networks.”

Including locations in Bengaluru and Indore, Rakuten Symphony’s employee base in India has grown to over 3,300 in less than one year through acquisitions and organic growth, and there are plans to further expand headcount over the coming years through recruitment in the fields of Open RAN, cloud, automation, data and telecom standards. India is also an important source of new talent for Rakuten Symphony, with about 150 graduates from top engineering colleges set to come to Japan in 2022 to work for Rakuten Mobile and support the growth of Rakuten Symphony.

With operations across Japan, the United States, Singapore, India, Europe and the Middle East Africa region, Rakuten Symphony brings together all of Rakuten’s telco products, services and solutions under a single global banner to offer 4G and 5G infrastructure and platform solutions to customers worldwide
 

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