Iliad Raises Antitrust Concerns Over TIM, Vodafone Tower Deal

French telecom and media group Iliad (ILD.PA) has raised its concerns over the planned merger of the mobile towers of Telecom Italia (TIM) (TLIT.MI) and Vodafone (VOD.L) with the competition authorities, the group’s Italian country head said on Thursday.

Iliad rivals TIM and Vodafone agreed in July to fold their Italian mobile tower assets into TIM tower unit INWIT (INWT.MI) to cut debt and free up cash for the roll-out of next generation 5G networks, keeping joint control of the new entity.

“A partnership between operators like INWIT and Vodafone could put competition at risk… we are ready to defend ourselves if competition was at risk, Benedetto Levi said.

The 10 billion euro tie-up is under review by European antitrust authority.

Iliad entered the Italian market in 2018 with a low-cost mobile offer, putting pressure on the country’s biggest phone carriers Telecom Italia (TLIT.MI), Vodafone (VOD.L) and CK Hutchison’s Wind Tre (0001.HK), each controlling around a third of the Italian mobile market.

The French group is the only operator not to have clinched a network-sharing agreement for 5G in Italy and appealed against a 5G agreement between Italian phone carriers Fastweb and Wind Tre.

“Generally speaking, we are not against network sharing agreements per se, but these partnerships should not create distortions in the market”, Levi said.

He added the group aims to launch its own 5G offer in Italy by the end of the year.―Reuters