The purchase of Wind Hellas is expected to strengthen Nova Broadcasting Group, which United Group acquired last year
Earlier this week, United Group announced an agreement with Crystal Almond Holdings to acquire one of Greece’s three mobile operators, Wind Hellas. The purchase, if approved by regulators, will close in 2022 and would strengthen Nova Broadcasting Group, which United acquired last year.
According to United Group’s CEO Victoriya Boklag, the company was attracted to Wind’s “strong mobile business” and its potential to “fit with the media and the fixed-line expertise of Nova and United Group.”
“In Wind,” continued Boklag, “we are buying a successful business that will enable us to strengthen our presence and offering to customers across Greece.”
Wind has a total of 4.2 million users and generates annual revenues of more than EUR 500 million ($586 million) from mobile, fixed, internet and TV services.
“Acquiring and integrating strong local telecom and media businesses onto our platform is a core part of United Group’s European growth strategy,” said Nikos Stathopoulos, partner at BC Partners and chairman of United Group. “Greece is a key market for us and with the acquisition of Wind, we are able to create a leading converged operator and contribute to the development of Greece’s telecoms sector through investments in network infrastructure, content, technology and innovative products and services and be a leading force in the digitalization of the country.”
In related news, United Group recently announced that it will be utilizing Nokia’s cloud-native core network products in Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia, including the vendor’s Cloud Packet Core, Voice Core, 3G Core and Cloud Infrastructure and Subscriber Data Management (SDM) software. Beginning later this year, the core deployments will be rolled out for the telecom provider’s 3G and 4G networks on the cloud, via Nokia’s cloud infrastructure followed by 5G non-standalone and standalone services.
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