What’s up with… Orange, Sparkle, Lidl

• EC approves €4.25bn MásOrange M&A deal
• Commission also gives green light to €700m Sparkle acquisition
• Lidl’s parent spies MVNO growth opportunity

In today’s industry news roundup: The European Commission’s merger regulations team has approved Orange’s move to take full ownership of Spanish telco MásOrange; the same team has also approved the sale of Telecom Italia’s wholesale and international division Sparkle; supermarket giant Lidl plans to add mobile services to its shopping app in many more markets, according to reports; and much more!

The European Commission has given its approval for the €4.25bn acquisition by Orange of the 50% stake in Spanish operator MásOrange that it doesn’t already own and which is currently held by private equity consortium Lorca (Cinven, KKR, and Providence): Orange and Lorca signed a binding agreement for the deal in December last year. Orange has previously stated that taking full control of MásOrange will help it to “accelerate” its Lead the Future strategic plan and “further strengthen Orange’s position in Spain, the group’s second-largest market in Europe.” The EC noted that the “notified transaction would not raise competition concerns, given the limited impact on the market structure.”

The M&A muscles in Brussels have been busy, it seems… After the third time of asking, the European Commission has given approval to the acquisition by the Italian government and Retelit of Telecom Italia (TIM)’s wholesale division, Sparkle. BidCo – a joint venture between Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) and Retelit, a provider of communications and IT services to the Italian enterprise sector – agreed a deal with TIM in April 2025, valuing Sparkle, which manages the Italian operator’s Tier-1 network, including its subsea cable infrastructure, at €700m. Through the European Antitrust Authority’s transaction register, the commission announced the deal can now proceed, which could also pave the way for TIM’s planned €400m share buyback: Two previous filings were withdrawn in December and January. Telecom Italia expects the deal to close in the second quarter of 2026, subject to US clearance. The news comes only weeks after Telecom Italia itself became the focus of a major takeover offer – see Telecom Italia receives €10.8bn takeover bid. 

Schwarz Group, the parent company of giant pan-European budget supermarket chain Lidl, has invested $80m to take a near 10% stake in eSIM platform operator 1Global and will use the Dutch company’s platform to expand Lidl Connect, its mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) operation, into more markets, according to Handelsblatt (subscription required). Lidl already offers branded mobile services in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and, according to this Financial Times article (subscription required), plans to expand the service to about 30 markets, including the US, the UK, France and Spain, though exact timings and the identity of the local radio access network operator partners it would need to provision its services have not yet been made available. But it seems Lidl is looking to make use of its brand awareness and use its existing Lidl Plus app (which has about 100 million users across multiple markets) to develop a digital super app that can offer discounts, communications services and other services. For 1Global, which is already enabling fintech firms, such as Revolut, to offer low-cost mobile connectivity that can be bundled with banking services, the investment and deal will only strengthen its position as a significant enabler of digital communications services.    

Latin American telco Millicom has struck a long-term agreement with Trans Americas Fiber System to join the TAM-1 submarine cable system that is set to connect North America, Central America, Colombia and the Caribbean. Announced in 2023 and currently being laid, the 7,000km TAM-1 cable will offer 18Tbit/s of capacity across two complementary deployments: A northern section, that links Florida to Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras; and a southern section that runs from Florida to St Croix in the US Virgin Islands, and on to Puerto Rico, Panama, Costa Rica and Colombia. Millicom, which operates using the Tigo brand, says the new link will help enhance its current international capacity and support investments in the region, including recent acquisitions of several of Telefonica’s LatAm operations, including those in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Uruguay. 

Oni-Tel Fibre Networks and Africa Data Centres have partnered to boost datacentre connectivity at the latter’s sites in South Africa. The agreement will see fibre optic cable infrastructure provider Oni-Tel deliver high-speed, low-latency connectivity to Africa Data Centres’ campuses in Midrand and Samrand, both located in the province of Guateng. Africa Data Centres, which is owned by Cassava Technologies, operates one of the continent’s largest interconnected, vendor- and cloud-neutral datacentre platforms, including nine datacentres in six countries, with campuses in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.

Cisco has announced its “intent” to acquire AI observability specialist Galileo Technologies for an undisclosed sum to help “unlock the full potential of AI”. Cisco noted in this blog that Galileo was “purpose-built to solve one of the hardest and most consequential problems in AI: Trust. From day 1, its platform has given AI teams the tools to evaluate AI quality, detect AI failures before they reach users, and continuously improve AI behaviour in production – turning observability from a nice-to-have into a core pillar of AI development.”

Expect a lot of quantum computing activity this week as Tuesday 14 April is World Quantum Day, which is “an annual celebration promoting public awareness and understanding of quantum science and technology around the world”. To put this into a broader context, April 14 is also, it seems, the day when a lot of other things are afforded a particular focus – it is also, apparently, Pecan Day (we like those nuts…) and National Look Up At The Sky Day (seriously) – but more importantly and relevantly it is also Identity Management Day, which is arguably just as important as World Quantum Day. Why April 14 for the quantum-lovin’ folks? Well – and I can’t believe you didn’t know this – it’s linked to Planck’s constant, which is a fundamental number in quantum mechanics, and 4/14 (if you conform to the North American way of writing dates) is the rounded first three digits of that constant. World Quantum Day is also a reminder that we are getting closer to a much more serious calendar event – Q-Day. 

– The staff, TelecomTV