Cellnex Telecom has closed the acquisition of Dutch telecoms infrastructure operator Alticom from Infracapital. 

The acquisition, which includes 30 towers and long-range sites throughout the Netherlands, for a total value of €133 million (US$158 million).

The incorporation of Alticom strengthens and consolidates Cellnex Telecom’s position among independent telecommunications infrastructure operators in the Netherlands. Alticom’s long-range site network (tall towers with large equipment capacity) hosts wireless voice, data and audiovisual content transmission equipment and complements the network of 758 urban and rural sites that Cellnex Netherlands already manages.

The characteristics of Alticom’s sites are a key element to the future roll-out of 5G. They have the capacity – and connectivity to the fibre optic backbone – to host remote or ‘caching’ servers to bring data processing and storage capacity to the end users of 5G-based applications which is essential for meeting the exponentially increasing demand and requirements of an increasing number of people and connected objects: 50 billion by 2020.