Int’l Roundup: Ciena, Telefonica, Uniti

A few items from Asia and Latin America worth noting:

Ciena is helping Rakuten build out its new mobile network services in Japan. Rakuten is leveraging Ciena’s 6500 coherent optical platform and Blue Planet software to power a 400G capable national backbone that will underlie the next generation mobile network infrastructure they are building out. Oki Electric is helping out with the deployment.

Telefonica has sold off another piece of its international portfolio. They announced an agreement late last week to sell the company’s Costa Rica, Panama, and Nicaragua units to Millicom, a deal that parallels the recent sale of the company’s Guatemala and El Salvador units to America Movil. The new deal will raise approximately €1.4 billion for Telefonica, which will help them make good on promises to improve the company’s balance sheet through debt reduction.

And also last week down in Central America, Uniti Group announced the sale of its Latin American tower business. Phoenix Tower International has agreed to pay approximately $100M to acquire the assets, which include approximately 500 towers across Mexico, Colombia, and Nicaragua. Uniti is currently under some pressure due to the Windstream/Aurelius court decision due to Uniti’s dependence on lease revenue from Windstream.

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Categories: Mergers and Acquisitions · Telecom Equipment · Towers