Following months of speculation, a decision that may come as little surprise to many observers has been made by Hungarian mobile carrier Magyar Telekom, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, to spin off its telecom tower assets.
In fact the operator announced plans to review its existing tower infrastructure and base station assets last July, with the potential aim of separating its passive infrastructure assets into a wholly owned subsidiary. It said at the time that the purpose of the review was to analyse the benefits and risks of separating assets into a wholly owned subsidiary.
The benefits do seem to have outweighed the risks, given that Magyar Telekom will now spin off approximately 2,800 locations where the passive mobile infrastructure is located out of a total of about 3,700 towers. The passive infrastructure is comprised of telecom towers and rooftop sites.
This isn’t quite the end of the story, however. News resource Data Centre Dynamics reports that a final decision on the tower plans will be made at the company's AGM in May, and an agreement to separate the assets, if that decision is approved, will be drawn up by the end of this year.
As the same source reports, several European carriers have sought to spin off their infrastructure assets in the last few years, including Magyar Telekom owner Deutsche Telekom and domestic rivals Vodafone Hungary and Yettel Hungary.
Magyar Telekom Group reportedly saw its total revenue increase by 11.9% year-on-year in Q4 2024.
Tower sales and spin-offs are clearly the order of the day and not just in Europe. Among recent tower sale headlines in these pages are Indus Towers’ major tower purchase in India from Bharti Airtel and Bharti Hexacom, while Telkom in South Africa is believed to be very close to finally selling its Swiftnet tower business to infrastructure-focused private equity firm Actis.
