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Facing unprecedented industry transformation and emerging competitive threats, many telecommunications companies are turning to mergers and acquisitions to add new capabilities and evolve their businesses for the next era. At the same time, in the biggest industry reset since deregulation, the integrated telco is giving way to more disaggregated, narrowly focused business models. We’re tracking telecom M&A activity around the world, and we’ll publish the latest developments in this dashboard each quarter.
Here are some of the key takeaways through the first quarter of 2025.
- Deal value down: After a strong 2024, global telecom M&A slowed in the first quarter of this year. Deal value declined to about $16 billion, down from $22 billion in the first quarter of last year and around $17 billion in the most recent quarter. The Americas accounted for 64% of the first quarter’s global total.
- Trends to watch: Divestments accounted for 75% of the first quarter’s global deal value, more than doubling their share from the same period last year. Most of the divestments were infrastructure deals. Some telcos sold assets outside their core business (e.g., Crown Castle’s divestment of its US fiber and small cells businesses and Telia’s sale of its TV and media business). Other telcos are exiting challenging markets, as with Telefonica’s planned sale of its Argentinian subsidiary. At the same time, some telcos are expanding into new industry verticals such as advertising, as demonstrated by T-Mobile’s acquisitions of Vistar Media and Blis.
- Biggest deal: Two deals tied for the quarter’s largest transaction: Crown Castle’s $4.25 billion sale of its US small cells business to private equity firm EQT and the sale of its US fiber assets to Zayo, which is backed by EQT and DigitalBridge, for the same amount.
- Scale deals lose momentum: After a notable uptick in 2024, scale deals declined in the first quarter. They accounted for 14% of global deal value, a drop from 47% in the first quarter last year.
- Long-term view: Despite a down quarter, scale deals still account for about 39% of all deal value over the past five years, the largest share among deal types. Infrastructure divestments have the second-largest share at 32% during that same period.
Bain’s Quarterly Global Telecom M&A Insights
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