Iliad's subsidiary Free and Digicel have announced the creation of a joint venture company, confirming recent press reports. The partnership supports their common objective of increasing the number of mobile cell sites in the French Antilles (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Barthelemy and Saint-Martin) and in French Guiana. The two groups said that the JV has the long-term ambition to invest in one of the largest telecom infrastructure networks in the region. Free and Digicel will be fully independent from a commercial perspective, with no impact on their spectrum licences and core network operations.
Local news source Interentreprises recently reported that the new Guadeloupe-based JV, called Madiacom, was created to pool assets from Digicel Antilles Francaises Guyane. These include access to over 200 mobile masts used by Digicel under a leaseback agreement signed with Phoenix Tower International (PTI) in 2018, as part of the sale of the infrastructure.
Iliad has yet to introduce commercial offers in the region, although it has reportedly started deploying its own cell sites as it prepares to launch LTE services. The group operates via the subsidiary Free Caraibe, which owns the LTE licenses awarded by telecom authority Arcep in 2016. Under the license terms, the operator has an obligation to use the spectrum resources effectively, with a first regulatory deadline set for mid-2020.
