Vodafone Romania, the country’s second largest mobile network operator (MNO) by subscribers, has transferred the company’s passive infrastructure to Vodafone Towers, a company founded by Vodafone Group in 2020 to manage the towers of its local subsidiary, reports local publication Profit.ro. According to a document seen by the website, the legal separation ‘is in line with the strategy of Vodafone Group and other major telecom operators, including Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Orange, to develop more efficient passive infrastructure dedicated to the telecoms sector and, consequently, to improve the return on these assets’. The telco believes the split will enhance the management of key infrastructure assets, streamline costs, and optimise best practices within the portfolio, while also enabling it to prepare for increased data use following the launch of 5G services and create additional income streams from new business opportunities.
As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, in July 2019 Vodafone Group unveiled its plan to legally separate its European tower infrastructure into a new organisation, provisionally known as TowerCo but renamed Vantage Towers in July 2020. Vodafone stated the new organisation, which will become operational in May 2021, would own Europe’s largest tower portfolio, comprising approximately 61,700 towers across ten countries, with 75% of these sites located in the major markets of Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.
