US-based Digital Realty’s long-rumoured acquisition of Ascenty from private equity firm Great Hill Partners illustrates how the data centre giant has embraced targeted M&A to scale its worldwide footprint. The US$1.8bn transaction includes 14 data centres and a nearly 4,500-km fibre optic network, positioning Digital Realty as...

Connectivity Business compiles the latest M&A and financing deals by country, company, mandate, and mandated.

Panasonic Avionics is teaming up with a broadband inflight connectivity rival amid speculation that it has been considering spinning off the assets. The US-based company, which primarily uses Ku-band technology, signed a 10-year deal that will see British satellite operator Inmarsat become its exclusive...

While AT&T’s US$84.5bn mega-acquisition of entertainment company Time Warner upended the telecoms sector, it also put the US carrier in a highly leveraged position with limited wiggle room. The transformational deal has helped the incumbent telco evolve into a digital media company, effectively challenging all other players in the space. With Time Warner, renamed as WarnerMedia, AT&T has a clear foothold in the digital advertising market, creating an effective rival to dominant tech giants Facebook and Alphabet’s Google. Yet the legacy telco must contend with...

Technological progress and growing interest from the commercial market may have pushed high altitude platform (HAP) connectivity close to the tipping point. While plans to commercialise HAPs have been floating around for decades without much success, NSR analyst Siddharth Shihora believes the current wave is different, and better equipped to fund the R&D that...

Telecom Italia emerged as a key bidder in Italy’s spectrum auction as the incumbent continues to be vexed by intense competition in its home market and renewed unrest from an activist investor. Significantly, the country’s carriers demonstrated a strong appetite for the 5G airwaves, driving up the price of MHz/Pop in the auction, which is run by Italian telecom regulator Agcom through the Ministry of Economic Development. In the first round of the auction, Telecom Italia won...

Looking to boost capacity ahead of 5G deployments, telecoms companies are expanding small cell footprints through strategic partnerships and targeted M&A. US telco giants AT&T and T-Mobile US recently inked two significant small cell agreements, indicating how strategies are being developed to handle the massive data uptick expected with 5G rollouts. Small cell growth is expected to be... 

The stock for Gogo has risen 17% since last week, though observers have varied opinions about the reasons behind bulge while remaining concerned about the unsettled company’s outlook. Leverage, cash burn, the company’s business model and…