Cellnex and Bouygues Telecom have announced a strategic agreement to deploy and operate a fibre optic network in France to support and accelerate the roll-out of 5G in France.
Planned investment up to 2027 stands at € 1 billion, which will be used to roll out a network of 31,500 km., which will interconnect the telecommunications towers providing service to Bouygues Telecom – 5,000 of which belong to Cellnex – with the network of 'Central' and 'Metropolitan offices' for housing data processing centres (Edge Computing).
The agreement also envisages rolling out up to 90 new 'metropolitan offices' up to 2027, to add up to the 150 centres planned and agreed with Bouygues Telecom in December 2018 (88) and February 2019 (62).
Bouygues Telecom will be the anchor tenant of the new network and has signed a 30+5-year contract that extends Cellnex’s backlog of contracted future sales by € 4 billion, up to € 44 billion.
Once the network and the 'metropolitan offices' are fully deployed, the EBITDA generated by the joint venture created by both companies to roll out and manage this fibre network will stand at € 80 million.
The new agreement with Bouygues Telecom reinforces Cellnex’s position on the French market. Cellnex has been operating in France since 2016, when it acquired an initial package of 500 sites precisely from Bouygues Telecom. Once all the agreements with Bouygues Telecom and Free (Iliad) are closed and all the planned sites have been built (up to 2027) Cellnex will manage a portfolio of almost 14,000 sites in France, which will become the group’s main market by volume of assets managed and by turnover.
