In another example of how operator business models are changing as we approach wide-scale 5G rollout, Vodafone Romania has transferred its passive infrastructure to another Vodafone company.
Vodafone Romania is the country’s second largest mobile network operator by subscribers. Its passive infrastructure is now owned by a company founded by Vodafone Group in 2020 to manage the towers of its local subsidiaries.
According to TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate the operator believes the split will enhance the management of key infrastructure assets, streamline costs and optimise best practices within the portfolio, while also enabling Vodafone’s Romanian operation to prepare for increased data use following the launch of 5G services. There will also be opportunities to create additional income streams from new business opportunities.
Vodafone Group is not the only operator pursuing this sort of passive infrastructure strategy. Other major telecommunications operators, including Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Orange, have been using a similar approach to allow them to develop more efficient passive infrastructure for the telecommunications sector and, consequently, to improve their return on assets.
The announcement that Vodafone’s European tower infrastructure was to be separated into a new organisation was made in the summer of 2019. The new organisation, called Vantage Towers, is described as one of Europe’s largest and most geographically diverse tower companies with 68,000 towers and 6,000 micro sites (small cells and distributed antenna systems) across nine countries.
The company says it benefits from long-term contractual commitments with highly rated tenants, which provide resilient, long-term and predictable inflation-linked revenues.