There are six towercos managing just over 53,000 towers in Italy, with the  bulk ofnew build driven by commitments from INWIT to TIM and Vodafone for macro tower and small cell deployment. BTS is strong followingcommitments from earlier M&A deals as well. In 2019 MNO Iliad sold its 2,200 to Cellnex and the deal included a new builds of up to 1,000 towers for the operator.

At the end of 2020 Hutchison signed a deal to sell their European tower portfolio to Cellnex. The Italian portion of the deal added 8,900 existing sites to Cellnex’ portfolio, as well as a BTS pipeline of 1,100 sites.

In mid-2022 INWIT (in conjunction with TIM and Vodafone) won a government tender to deploy 5G sites in 1,200 rural locations.

In addition to macro towers, the deployment of small cells for network densification in urban areas will continue with projects to be delivered by existing players such as INWIT and Cellnex and new market entrants such as Boldyn who in end 2023 was entrusted to deploy 2,200 small cells across Rome to provide indoor connectivity on all metro lines.

The 5G GAIL cross-border transport corridor between Italy and Austria which includes digitising 130km of roads under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF-2) will see new macro towers and DAS being built by Cellnex Italy and co-financed by CEF.