MásMóvil, closer to leaving Portugal after an agreement between Vodafone and Digi

MásMóvil is one step closer to definitively shelving its Portuguese adventure. In September 2022, the company agreed with Vodafone to sell Carbonitel, its subsidiary in the country, but the operation has barely registered any progress in more than a year of investigation by the Portuguese Competition Authority.. However, an old acquaintance of both companies in the Spanish market has emerged to unblock the agreement.

Digi and Vodafone have signed an agreement so that the former has access to the latter's network and can complete its landing in the Portuguese market. “The agreement will be part of the proposed remedies sent to the Portuguese Competition Authority,” says Vodafone Portugal, in statements to EL MUNDO.. Now, the Portuguese regulator has to consider that the transfer of these assets will compensate for the possible harm to competition of the agreement to give the 'green light' and unblock the operation.

The arrival of Digi is, precisely, one of the reasons why MásMóvil decided to leave the Portuguese market. Unlike in Spain, in Portugal there are three operators that concentrate the market almost completely: NOS, MEO and Vodafone. However, the Portuguese Government enabled a special 5G auction for the arrival of new players that would encourage competition in the sector and there both the Spanish company and the one of Romanian origin took positions.

Given the arrival of this competitor, MásMóvil considered that the possibility of success was more uncertain and the necessary effort greater, so it preferred to close its Portuguese adventure and focus on Spain where it hopes to complete its merger with Orange, an operation in which Digi also acts as a necessary third party, since it will acquire a significant part or all of the assets that the two merging companies must sell for Brussels to approve the merger.

A CHILLED MARKET

However, the sale of the Portuguese division of MásMóvil may be far from being the most important corporate operation in the Portuguese telecommunications market.. Billionaire Patrick Drahi has put the Portuguese division of his telecommunications company Altice (which operates under the brand MEO) up for sale..

The investor seeks to reduce the debt of his conglomerate and could receive up to 7,000 million euros for this business unit, among whose interested parties would be STC Group, the same Saudi operator that acquired 9.9% of Telefónica and that wants to continue growing in Europe , according to Bloomberg, although the same source points out that Altice would prefer to sell to a private equity fund rather than an industrial group.