• Vodafone and Digi acquire Telekom Romania mobile assets 
• The satellite IoT sector is set for furious growth
• GlobalConnect has reportedly been put up for sale

In today’s industry news roundup: Vodafone and Digi snap up Telekom Romania’s mobile assets for just €70m in total; Berg Insight is predicting enormous growth in the satellite IoT sector in the coming few years; Nordic data network operator GlobalConnect is reportedly in the shop window with a valuation of €8bn; and more!

Vodafone Group is bulking up its operations in Romania with the €30m acquisition of part of Telekom Romania Mobile Communications (TKRM), which in turn is a subsidiary of Deustche Telekom-controlled Greek telco OTE. Vodafone is buying TKRM’s post-paid customer base, while the pre-paid customer relationships are being acquired by Digi Communications for €40m. Both telcos will “also gain additional spectrum and towers as part of the transaction,” noted Vodafone in this announcement. An merger and acquisition deal between the parties was originally struck in October 2024 but only now have the details been agreed. Vodafone Romania ended June with 6.3 million mobile customers and is expected to add about 2 million from the TKRM deal, while Digi Romania will add about 1.4 million to the 7 million mobile customers it had at the end of June. The agreement means Romania will now have three mobile service providers – Vodafone, Digi and Orange.  

In other news from Vodafone, it has appointed Ruth McGill as chief HR officer and a member of the Group Executive Committee with effect from 1 January 2026. She will succeed Leanne Wood who announced her departure on 10 September. McGill joins from ING, where she has been chief HR officer for the past five years.

With satellite services all the rage, it’s a good time to catch up with some satellite internet of things (IoT) market stats. According to Berg Insights, a reliable source of IoT data, there were 5.8 million satellite IoT connections at the end of 2024, with Iridium, Orbcomm, Viasat (courtesy of its Inmarsat acquisition) and Globalstar the market leaders. The market is expected to grow at a furious pace over the coming years – at a compound annual growth rate of 41.1%  – and by 2029 boast 32.5 million connections. “Only about 10% of the Earth’s surface has access to terrestrial connectivity services, which leaves a massive opportunity for satellite IoT communications,” noted Berg Insight in this press release. “Satellite connectivity provides a complement to terrestrial cellular and non-cellular networks in remote locations, especially useful for applications in agriculture, asset tracking, maritime and intermodal transportation, oil and gas industry exploration, utilities, construction and governments. Both incumbent satellite operators and more than two dozen new initiatives are now betting on the IoT connectivity market,” it added, namechecking AST SpaceMobile, Lynk, Sateliot, Skylo and Starlink as among those that will help drive growth. 

Private equity firm EQT is looking to sell its stake in Nordic data network operator GlobalConnect at a valuation of €8bn, according to the Financial Times. EQT holds a majority stake in GlobalConnect, while Mubadala Investment, the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, holds a minority stake that it acquired in 2022 just ahead of a restructuring process at GlobalConnect. As a result of that restructuring, GlobalConnect announced a $600m deal to sell its consumer broadband business in Norway to Telenor. GlobalConnect delivers fibre broadband connectivity to more than 907,000 consumers and “end-to-end connectivity solutions” to 30,000 enterprise customers via its 244,000 kilometre fibre network that runs across Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Finland. GlobalConnect employs approximately 1,800 people and had a turnover of 8.1bn Swedish krona ($860m) in 2024.

Axians, the ICT and systems integration operation of French firm Vinci Energies, has strengthened its ties with Nokia “to drive the next phase of communications infrastructure and mobile network development in the EMEA region,” the companies have announced. “The combined solutions are targeted to meet the growing demand for high-performing connectivity and digitalisation across industries… Axians and Nokia will now scale their joint efforts to support European organisations with resilient, high-performance networking solutions. The collaboration will focus on delivering next-generation connectivity, including optical transport, datacentre networking, IP routing, private 5G, fixed network access and secure communications technologies,” they added. 

– The staff, TelecomTV