CMS Network Sharing 5: Celebrating 10 years of the Network Sharing Study

For the last 10 years we have been following the evolution of network sharing in the telecom industry. This fifth edition continues our study of how companies in the sector use network sharing to save costs and rationalise services.

For this edition, the CMS Network Sharing Study not only gathers all factual information about 76 network sharing deals that have been closed from May 2021 in 46 different jurisdictions worldwide, and the differences among them: it also includes interviews with some of the main actors, such as American Tower, Macquarie Capital and Totem Towers, as well as papers from experts regarding topics such as telecommunications network financing, foreign direct investment, competition Law, 5G, towers and fibre.

As a testament to the creativity of the industry, network sharing has slowly shifted.  Sharing through agreements have given place -in some cases- to sharing through incorporated companies.  B-lateral deals do still exist but neutral host networks, serving all operators in the market, are now the main protagonists through which networks are effectively shared by multiple operators.

The digital revolution during the last 20 years has required and is still requiring vast investment in access networks including optical fibre, towers and other assets (now satellites): this comes at a cost.  In some cases the traditional telcos couldn’t monetise their investments (perhaps due, in Europe, to excessive regulation). As a result, indebted companies were in need to sell and/or share their infrastructures, sometimes to investment funds that had no ambition to compete in the provision of services and created independent NetCos  offering wholesale services - the US towers market being one example, with 90% of towers controlled by independent TowerCos while in Europe we have seen FibreCos coming to shake up the FTTH build. The time when each operator owned (and financed) the network it used has long passed. Competition in services remains, but now competition in infrastructures (in parallel with competition between different infrastructures) may be the next future.

Globalisation has also arrived in network sharing, with growing protagonism in Latin America (the topic of special focus in the Study) and Africa as well as South-East Asia.  South America has seen a large amount of activity and the 5^th edition of the study is doing a spotlight on the deals seen in the region.

Interestingly, the existence of network slicing in 5G could give the lead again to telecom operators, as it will allow them to create virtual networks, to be offered either to smaller operators or to companies wanting to have their own independent, private and dedicated slice of a network, in a cloud-style network-as-a-service new pattern.

The rise of satellite services in the coming years will also create the need for an enhanced spectrum sharing. Satellite will also be a growing infrastructure competing with towers and other access networks.

So whilst we reflect on changes and trends since the last few years, our eyes are also turned towards the future and how the industry will adapt and find news ways to share.