Liberty Global, the parent company of Belgium’s Telenet, has hired Goldman Sachs to assess a possible sale of the company’s 3,000 transmission masts.
The process, which is still at an early stage, was first reported by Bloomberg
The cablenet also owns the mobile operator BASE; its mast inventory is estimated to fetch as much as €600 million with interest from both private equity and infrastructure companies.
Telcos that were once happy to run their own masts are now putting them at an arm’s length and concentrating instead on the development of 5G services or high-speed internet. Vodafone floated its 82,000 strong mast fleet on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in March, while Orange hived off 25,000 sites in France and Spain to the independent TOTEM in May.
However, De Tijd reports that Belgium’s three principal operators, Proximus, Orange and Telenet, are all obliged to share their sites, a requirement that might hamper a sale.
Liberty CEO Mike Fries has already indicated he would be interested in a sale of the 3,000 masts held by the VodafoneZiggo JV in the neighbouring Netherlands.
