Austrian regulator RTR said that the Telekom Control Commission (TKK), the arm responsible for the regulation of the telecom market, has given its green light to Magenta Telekom and Hutchison Drei, to share network infrastructure. The companies applied in July to share infrastructure components, in a bid to reduce costs.
Drei and Magenta were able at the end of last year to already work together on the expansion of 5G networks and, to a certain extent, share active network components, such as signal processing or network control, said RTR's Klaus Steinmaurer. The approval means users will see more network expansion and better mobile phone services, the regulator said.
RTR gave its approval to the cooperation after Magenta and Drei agreed to pass on the advantages of the cooperation to MNVOs. Drei and Magenta started thinking about a cooperation in April 2023, limited to areas with little competition levels over the duration of the cooperation. There is therefore no significant restriction of competition for network infrastructure, RTR said.