The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a €315 million ($344 million) loan with Cellnex to support 5G infrastructure and digital transition across Europe.
The financing will unlock a total investment of €631 million ($689 million) to improve and expand the coverage and capacity of high-bandwidth mobile network infrastructure that supports 5G rollouts in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Poland.
The project will include new telecoms infrastructure such as mobile phone masts and urban base station improvements to enable the infrastructure to be shared by multiple operators; fiber rollout to connect towers to each operator’s network; distributed antenna systems to significantly increase base station capacity; and the use of renewable energies in selected base stations.
The project is an example of the open-access business model typical of passive telecoms infrastructure providers such as Cellnex. This model encourages the use of base stations shared by