What’s up with… Vodafone, Telenor, Sparkle

• Vodafone strikes fibre JV deal in Greece
• Telenor agrees to buy Enivest
• Sparkle partners with Xebia for AWS for academia

In today’s industry news roundup: Vodafone enters its M&A era with potential fibre deals in Greece and the UK; Telenor agrees to buy Norwegian fibre operator Enivest for $264m; Sparkle teams up with consultancy Xebia to offer AWS cloud services to academic institutions; and much more!

Vodafone Greece has reached an agreement with utility company Public Power Corporation (PPC Group) over a potential 50:50 joint venture (JV) that would merge their respective fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) businesses. The agreement isn’t finalised yet, but Vodafone’s Greek unit has confirmed it is working towards a JV that would serve as a wholesale operator, able to connect to more than 1.6 million homes and businesses in Greece. A deal would bring together Vodafone’s Fiber2All with the utility’s subsidiary, PPC FiberGrid. The potential partners still need to complete due diligence and reach a final agreement on terms, with Vodafone warning there is no guarantee that a deal will be reached. For PPC’s part, its FTTH network has reached around 1.88 million homes (1.1 million ready for service), with the utility firm the bigger partner, according to its own statement – Vodafone’s FTTH is currently able to connect more than 550,000 households, it said.

Sticking with Vodafone and broadband M&A… According to a report in the Financial Times (subscription required), VodafoneThree has tabled a bid for TalkTalk’s consumer broadband business. The FT claims the major UK telco, formed last year, had initially declined to enter the auction for TalkTalk but has now submitted a second round bid for the business, which is estimated to be worth between £200m and £300m, according to New Street Research cited in the report. Any deal would hand VodafoneThree around 1.75 million broadband customers and go a long way to meeting Vodafone Group CEO Margherita Della Valle’s goal of doubling its UK broadband customer base to 4 million by the early 2030s. TalkTalk is also seeking a buyer for its wholesale division PXC, as we reported in January.

That’s not the only UK broadband sector speculation doing the rounds at the moment…. The FT is also reporting that the private equity owners of UK fibre altnets Community Fibre and Hyperoptic, both of which have developed decent footprints and subscriber bases, are sniffing around for potential buyers in the wake of Netomnia’s recent £2bn acquisition by Nexfibre, whose CEO predicted during a recent TelecomTV interview that his company’s move would spur others into action. 

And in more broadband sector merger news – this time over in Norway – Telenor has agreed a deal to buy fibre operator Enivest for 2.5bn Norwegian krone (NOK) ($264m). The acquisition will add around 28,000 fibre customers to Telenor’s base and give the telco a 34% stake in Årdalsnett, which has around 3,000 customers. Enivest – which launched in 2001 and is headquartered in Førde – is one of the largest fibre providers in Western Norway, with reported revenues of approximately NOK 290 million and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of around NOK 130 million in 2025. It will continue to operate as a separate unit, with the current management set to stay in place. Telenor said it expects to see “significant” synergies, if the deal is approved by the Norwegian Competition Authority, and plans to invest NOK 150m over time in integration and network upgrades. If approved, the deal is expected to close this year. Earlier this week, the competition watchdog approved Telenor’s acquisition of fibre provider GlobalConnect’s consumer operation, adding 140,000 customers (minus 15,000 subscribers it will divest as a condition of the deal) to Telenor’s base (as we reported here).

Sparkle, the soon-to-be-sold international network arm of Telecom Italia (TIM), has partnered with global IT consultancy Xebia to offer AWS cloud services for research and education institutions across Europe, the company announced in an email sent to the media. The partnership will see Xebia bring its expertise in cloud and AI transformations to offer R&E organisations a single entry point to build a scalable, secure cloud infrastructure, with access to AI tools, high-performance computing, data platforms and managed cloud services. The agreement covers Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. It comes just a week after Sparkle announced it had expanded the reach of European research and education operator Géant across Europe, Africa and MENA – part of the Italian firm’s wider relationship with Géant, which also allows it to offer AWS services under the European National Research and Education Network’s OCRE 2024 cloud procurement framework.

– The staff, TelecomTV