European tower company Vantage Towers has entered into a long-term contract with German telco 1&1 for the provision of passive infrastructure to build Germany’s fourth mobile network.
Under the terms of the agreement, Vantage Towers will be providing 1&1 access to up to 5,000 existing sites.
Vivek Badrinath, CEO of Vantage Towers, said: “By co-locating on our sites, 1&1 can proceed with a timely launch of its 5G network cost effectively and with high quality. We’re delighted to be supporting the fast roll-out of 5G in Germany and a sustainable digital transformation in Europe.”
“With Vantage Towers, we have gained a strong partner for the passive infrastructure of our 5G mobile network. By cooperating with established tower companies, we want to primarily use existing antenna sites. This is environmentally friendly, conserves resources and at the same time accelerates our rollout,” said Ralph Dommermuth, CEO of 1&1 AG.
Vantage Towers said that the first sites will be made available next year with the aim of ensuring access to at least 3,800 sites by the end of 2025. The contract has a first term until the end of 2040, with the option for 1&1 to extend until 2060.
Headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany, Vantage Towers currently operates around 82,000 sites in ten countries. Vantage Towers’ portfolio includes towers, masts, rooftop sites, distributed antenna systems (DAS) and small cells.
In May 2021, 1&1 signed a national roaming agreement with Telefónica Deutschland, which will enable the company to offer its customers nationwide reception already in the roll-out phase of its new network.
In August, 1&1 AG and Japanese company Rakuten Group had announced that they were forming a long-term partnership to build the former’s mobile network.
Together with Rakuten, 1&1 will build what it claims to be Europe’s first fully virtualized mobile network based on Open RAN technology, which will feature a 100% cloud-based multi-vendor network architecture. Under the terms of the agreement, Rakuten became the general contractor for the 1&1 mobile network.
Rakuten Mobile had launched full-scale commercial mobile services in Japan via a fully virtualized cloud-native Open RAN mobile network as a new entrant in April 2020.
Specifically, Rakuten will take over the build of the active network equipment and will also be responsible for the overall performance of the 1&1 mobile network. The German telco will have access to the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP) stack of access, core, cloud and operations solutions as well as to its partner network. The deal also stipulates that Rakuten will provide its orchestration software so that the 1&1 network can be operated in a highly automated manner.
