Incumbents France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom could combine further infrastructure assets in Austria, Romania and Slovakia to cut costs.
The two companies are in talks to share mobile towers and associated ground infrastructure, but not spectrum like…
Incumbents France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom could combine further infrastructure assets in Austria, Romania and Slovakia to cut costs.
The two companies are in talks to share mobile towers and associated ground infrastructure, but not spectrum like the network merger seen in the UK with Everything Everywhere, TelecomFinance has learnt.
The two companies have already announced plans to share infrastructure in Poland as part of an agreement unveiled in late February to find ways to collaborate in areas such as equipment standardisation, home media servers, e-health and connected car technology.
These partnerships could also cover machine-to-machine and WiFi roaming initiatives, according to a joint statement.
Some reports have suggested that this closer collaboration could lead to more corporate mergers between the two.
A spokeswoman for DT declined to comment on the rumours, but insisted the group was not actively pursuing a network sharing strategy.
“DT generally evaluates all opportunities that may increase the quality of its services whilst decreasing cost,” she told TelecomFinance in an email.
“A cooperation for the construction and operation of a mobile network is one possibility, but not necessarily our top priority.
Especially the network quality is an important differentiator to the competition; as such each country’s particular circumstances and possible solutions to these must be studied very carefully.” DT has also recently agreed to sell its American business, T-Mobile USA, to AT&T, pending regulatory approval.
An FT spokesman insisted there were no plans to combine further assets with DT after the companies merged their respective Orange and T-Mobile units in the UK.
However, back in February, EE CFO Richard Moat told TelecomFinance that “people like what they’re seeing” in the multi-billion pound synergies DT and FT have made through this merger.
This £5.125bn deal was carried out last year by Perella Weinberg, BoA Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan.
Moat added at the time that it was “theoretically possible” for the companies to form similar JVs in other European countries.
