M&A Monthly: February/March 2026

Fresh from TeleGeography's GlobalComms team is this month's edition of M&A Monthly—your intelligence report on international telecom mergers and acquisitions.

From space-based AI to sub-terrestrial fiber, the market is buzzing with activity as players look to consolidate, equitize, or simply launch themselves into the stratosphere. Here's a run-down of recent developments.

Europe

We start our trawl in Europe, where the UK’s fiber landscape is being reshaped by a substantial connection. InfraVia, Liberty Global and Telefonica have dialed up an agreement to acquire Substantial Group – parent of Netomnia, Brsk and YouFibre – via their joint venture, nexfibre. Billed as the UK’s second largest altnet, the deal carries an enterprise value of £2 billion ($2.7 billion). As part of the digital house-cleaning, nexfibre will sell the retail brands to Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) for £150 million, while VMO2 nets £1.1 billion in cash and a 15% stake in nexfibre in exchange for a massive wholesale commitment. Completion of the transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected by Q3 2026.

The Netherlands market has also been particularly ‘clogged’ with activity this month. Liberty Global has decided to go Dutch permanently, striking a deal to buy Vodafone’s 50% stake in their VodafoneZiggo joint venture for €1.0 billion ($1.18 billion). Liberty plans to list the newly formed Ziggo Group in Amsterdam in 2027, effectively spinning the business off to shareholders.

Not everyone's finding the public markets so inviting, however; Dutch operator Odido has reportedly shelved its own €1 billion IPO plans after receiving a muted response from investors concerned about global volatility. The telco, owned by private equity groups Apax Partners and Warburg Pincus, was set to launch the IPO in early 2026.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Telefonica is reportedly still calling for a deal with 1&1, with negotiations formalizing for an acquisition valued at up to €5 billion to address network utilization issues.

Americas

Crossing the Atlantic to the US, where regulators have finally finished their paperwork. The FCC has given the green light to Charter Communications’ massive $34.5 billion acquisition of Cox Communications. To win over the Bureau, Charter promised to onshore all customer service jobs, invest heavily in rural builds and to introduce new DEI anti-discrimination safeguards.

(With a short trip to space)

Looking further up – specifically into orbit – Elon Musk-backed satellite giant SpaceX is merging with AI start-up xAI in a deal that values the latter – best known for its controversial Grok chatbot – at $125 billion and the combined ‘innovation engine’ at a cool $1 trillion. Elon Musk argues that solar-powered orbital data centers are the only way to scale AI without breaking the terrestrial power grid.

(And now back to the Americas)

Turning our focus to Latin America, there's a clear trend of infrastructure ‘towering’ over other deals. IHS Towers is packing its bags in the region, selling its operations in Brazil and Colombia to Macquarie Asset Management for $952 million.

This exit clears the deck for MTN Group to fully acquire the rest of the IHS business globally in a $6.2 billion deal. IHS operates almost 29,000 towers in five key MTN markets across Africa.

Sticking with Brazil, this month it emerged that funds linked to BTG are the only parties to show interest in Oi’s 27.26% stake in fiber wholesaler V.tal, which carries a minimum price tag of R$12.315 billion ($2.37 billion).

Further north in Paraguay, meanwhile, the race to revitalize state-owned Copaco has narrowed to four contenders, including India’s Jio and the UAE’s TALC Investment, as the government hunts for a strategic partner to bankroll fiber deployments.

Asia

Heading over to Asia, data centers are the hottest commodity on the menu. In the largest deal of its kind in Southeast Asia, a Singtel-KKR consortium is paying S$6.6 billion ($5.2 billion) to take full control of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC). Completion is expected in the second half of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals.

Not to be outdone, Telkom Indonesia is making its fourth attempt to find a partner for its own data center unit, NeutraDC, seeking a valuation of up to $1.5 billion. The sale comes as Telkom looks to unlock value from its infrastructure portfolio and fund capital-intensive expansions, following the $2.1 billion spin-off of its wholesale fiber unit, Telekom Infrastruktur Indonesia (TIF), in late 2025.

In Vietnam, the government is pushing for progress on a different front, issuing a decree to fast-track the ‘equitization’ (partial privatization) of VNPT as part of a plan to create state economic groups capable of competing on the world stage by 2030. TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database notes that VNPT has been earmarked for equitization for a number of years, and has already undergone restructuring as part of government efforts to reorganize state-owned companies to improve competition and efficiency.

Rest of the world

Down in Oceania, the market is bundling up for winter. Aussie Broadband has signed an agreement to acquire AGL Energy’s telecommunications business for A$115 million ($81 million) in shares, adding 396,000 broadband, mobile and fixed voice subscriptions to its base.

Across the Tasman Sea, New Zealand’s Spark has finalized the sale of a 75% stake in its data center business to Pacific Equity Partners (PEP) for NZ$705 million ($428 million), forming a new standalone entity named TenPeaks Data Centres.

Finally, we close the month with a quick look at Africa and the Middle East. In South Africa, open-access provider Frogfoot has hopped into the KwaZulu-Natal market by acquiring Mitsol’s fiber network for an undisclosed sum.

Meanwhile, Zain Bahrain is looking to move ‘4WARD’ by acquiring 100% of local ICT provider Infonas, a move designed to accelerate the operator's expansion into enterprise cloud and cybersecurity services.

Catch more M&A developments from the GlobalComms team next month!

Data on mobile markets, fixed broadband, fixed voice markets, and more

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