Telefonica is in talks to sell capacity to smaller German mobile providers including Freenet, Drillisch and Unitymedia KabelBW in order to win approval for its takeover of E-Plus from KPN. People familiar with the talks told Bloomberg that Telefonica is sounding out whether the companies would be interested in obtaining access to its wireless network while building up their own hardware for tasks such as data backhaul and billing. United Internet is also talking with Telefonica about a guarantee of wholesale access to faster internet speeds, the report said.
The deals would bolster the position of MVNOs on the German market, thought to be a key interest of the European Commission in its evaluation of the E-Plus takeover. Under the concessions, smaller operators would have the option of securing sufficient volumes and pricing from Telefonica using so-called mobile bitstream access, the people said. That would give them scale to make it worthwhile to invest in infrastructure such as fibre backhaul.
