Vodafone Italia and TIM (Telecom Italia) have signed a memorandum of understanding to share the cost of rolling out new 5G infrastructure throughout Italy, confirming recent reports. Under the terms of the so-called Active Sharing Project, the operators have committed to evaluating the technical and commercial feasibility of jointly deploying active 5G equipment across the country as well as sharing their existing 4G networks in order to support 5G active network sharing. They have also pledged to cooperate on the upgrade of their respective fibre transmission networks for mobile backhaul and look into extending their existing Passive Sharing Agreement, from approximately 10,000 sites today (around 45 percent of their combined passive towers), to a nationwide agreement.
In addition, TIM and Vodafone said they plan to explore combining their 22,000 towers in Italy into a single entity, potentially merging Vodafone’s tower infrastructure with that of Infrastrutture Wireless Italiane (Inwit), the tower group 60-percent owned by Telecom Italia. That potential combination would be “structured in a way to be value accretive to all parties involved” and, wherever possible, would seek to move active network equipment that is currently hosted on third party towers to the infrastructure of the new company.
The partners added that the idea would be to leave both parties with equal shareholdings and governance rights in Inwit with a view to ensuring there is no obligation for either to launch a tender offer for the tower unit’s remaining shares. They said the entire initiative is intended to promote healthy competition in the sector and facilitate an open environment for 5G development.
Under the exclusivity agreement signed, TIM and Vodafone said the aim is to conclude one or more of the planned initiatives during 2019.
