Spanish telecom operator Masmovil penned a 5G agreement with Orange Spain, boosting its EBITDA projection for the next three years.

In a press release outlining a wide partnership covering mobile, fibre and broadband, Masmovil said the agreement will speed up its 5G rollout capabilities and also significantly increase its fibre optic footprint by up to 14.2 million homes by 2020.

The deal gives access to Orange Spain’s entire 5G network thanks to a “virtual active sharing mode” agreement, enabling it to deploy 5G in 4,500 locations that cover 35 per cent of the Spanish population in 40 main cities including Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Malaga and Bilbao.

Masmovil is investing €180 million in the deal, “an amount significantly lower than the stand alone deployment.”

As a result of the deal, the company expects to save up to €40 million per year from 2021. EBITDA estimates for 2019 is now €465 million (up on earlier forecasts by €15 million), 2020 EBITDA is predicted to be between €570 million and €600 million (up €40-€50 million), 2021 between €670 million and €700 million. EBITDA margin is expected to be between 32 per cent and 34 per cent in 2021.

Masmovil has, through a series of acquisitions, grown to be a strong converged challenger in the Spanish market. In 2015, it was an MVNO, with revenue of €160 million, 500,000 mobile and 25,000 fixed customers. By 2017, it had revenue of €1.3 billion, with 5 million mobile and 504,000 fixed broadband customers. According to GSMA Intelligence it now claims a 10 per cent market share of Spain’s mobile subscribers after the successful purchase of Yoigo.