Eurobites: Cellnex sells 49% stake in Nordics business to Stonepeak

US investment firm Stonepeak has acquired a 49% stake in the Nordics businesses of Cellnex, the Spanish-owned towerco, with Stonepeak paying €730 million (US$774 million) for its slice. Cellnex says it will continue to manage the business of Cellnex Nordics on a day-to-day basis. Cellnex Nordics operates 4,557 sites across Sweden and Denmark. In a statement, Cellnex CEO Marco Patuano said: "The sale of a stake in our Nordic business at an appropriate valuation marks another significant step forward in our goal to attain investment grade ratings. The deal is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2024 at the latest."

The newly enlarged Eutelsat Group has today listed on the London Stock Exchange. Eutelsat Group was formed by the merger of Eutelsat and OneWeb, which was approved by Eutelsat shareholders on Thursday. CEO Eva Berneke said that the company's admission to the LSE would "offer the opportunity to a wider section of investors and shareholders to participate in our exciting journey."

Recent Sky Mobile outages have been linked to the replacement of Huawei equipment on its network, according to "people familiar with the situation" cited by the Financial Times (paywall applies). Sky Mobile rides on Virgin Media O2's network in the UK but, says the FT, provides some of its own equipment to offer mobile services.

Norway's data regulator wants to refer the $93,000-a-day fine it has imposed on Meta for privacy breaches to the European Data Authority, possibly making the penalty permanent across the European Union. As Reuters reports, the fine was imposed by Datatilsynet on August 14, but will expire after three months. Tobias Judin, Datatilsynet's head of international section, told Reuters: "Meta is not respecting our decision in Norway and they continue to violate the law across Europe. Over 250 million people are affected. Therefore, it is necessary to get a final decision from the EDPB so that we can force compliance on the European level." (See Eurobites: Facebook faces privacy class action.)

French authorities have approved an iPhone 12 software update issued by Apple after the company was forced to remove the device from sale earlier this month because of radiation concerns, Reuters reports. (See Eurobites: French radiation police remove iPhone 12 from sale.)

Luleå University of Technology in Sweden has joined Telia and Ericsson's NorthStar 5G program, which was set up by the two companies to promote the use of 5G in industry, with a particular focus on how it can be applied to transport. The program gives the university access to a test network equipped with the latest 5G technologies from Ericsson.

A new study from the UK's Social Market Foundation think-tank has concluded that eligibility for so-called social tariffs – such as those created in the broadband market – should be based on data gleaned from tax authorities and others and kick in automatically rather than relying  on households to apply for them. Currently, eligibility for broadband social tariffs is based on being in receipt of Universal Credit (a form of welfare), meaning roughly 4.2 million households across the UK can access such tariffs.