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…

A potential merger of China Telecom and China Unicom would advance the country’s 5G ambitions, creating a scaled global challenger able to invest in the capital-intensive next-generation infrastructure. The possible tie-up of the two state-run operators could also provide a hedge against the uncertainty of an escalating trade war between the US and China. A bulked-up telco would have greater scale and ability...

Marc Ganzi is CEO of Digital Bridge, a US-based digital infrastructure company, and managing partner of global investment firm Digital Colony, which is focused on next-generation mobile and internet infrastructure. Founded in 2018, Digital Colony combined the sector knowledge of Digital Bridge with the investment expertise of Colony Capital, a real estate investment management firm.

In June, Digital Colony closed its acquisition of Digita, the largest independent owner of telecom towers in Finland. More recently, Digital Colony unveiled an investment in UK-based Stratto, a provider of DAS and small cell networks offering an IaaS model delivering indoor mobile coverage. Connectivity Business talked with Ganzi about his criteria for investment, what he sees happening in the European market, and how...

The satellite industry should be “extremely wary” about jumping on the “5G bandwagon” to protect its interests as next generation communications take shape, the head of broadband operator Viasat warned. Satellite’s place in an emerging communications ecosystem attracted heated debate at Euroconsult’s...