Telecom Argentina offers fiber to unlock $1.245bn Movistar deal

Telecom Argentina's path to closing its $1.245 billion purchase of Telefónica's Argentine unit runs through a fiber sale. The carrier has proposed that Metrotel, a fiber-network operator backed by Riverwood Capital and Blackstone, acquire certain fixed-line infrastructure assets from Telefónica Móviles Argentina, according to Data Center Dynamics.

The transaction, announced in February 2025, gave Telecom control of Telefónica's Argentine businesses, including the Movistar and Tuenti brands. Final approval from the National Commission for the Defense of Competition (CNDC) remains pending. The asset-transfer proposal is the remedy Telecom hopes will get the deal over the line, a step that separates the retail acquisition from the wholesale infrastructure that sits underneath it.

The assets in play are where the two carriers overlap most directly. Telefónica Argentina operates fixed broadband and fiber-optic networks, plus the infrastructure used to provide wholesale connectivity, data transport, and network leasing. The CNDC's own documentation identifies these as markets where both companies are active, alongside corporate services and data centers.

The regulator's preliminary analysis flagged overlaps in connectivity to the wholesale internet network, data transport, and infrastructure leasing. It also noted both companies' presence in data center services, a segment that increasingly depends on fiber expansion and rising data traffic. A combined Telecom-Movistar would control a substantial share of the transport and leasing capacity that other carriers rely on to reach their own customers. That is the competitive concern the divestiture is designed to address.

Data Center Dynamics notes that Telefónica's fixed infrastructure includes the fiber that anchors its wholesale business. Those networks are not just retail broadband lines; they are the transport links that data centers and other carriers lease. In the CNDC's preliminary view, the overlap in that leasing market is where the combined company's market power would be most pronounced.

Telecom brings the Personal and Flow brands to the deal, with operations spanning mobile, broadband, television, corporate services, network infrastructure, and data centers. Telefónica adds fixed and mobile networks under the Movistar brand. Data Center Dynamics describes the acquisition as one of the largest recent transactions in the Argentine telecom sector, and the concentration of wholesale assets has been the crux of the review.

The choice of Metrotel as the buyer is the most telling part of the remedy. Metrotel is not a retail giant; it is a specialist in fiber-optic networks. Selling the infrastructure to a private-equity-backed fiber house keeps the wholesale market populated without handing a telecom rival a ready-made bundle of routes and customers. Riverwood Capital and Blackstone's backing gives Metrotel the balance sheet to take on the assets and operate them at scale.

The structure suggests the CNDC's concern extends beyond mobile market share to the physical layer underneath. Data center services, the regulator noted, are increasingly tied to fiber expansion and data traffic growth. A combined operator that also controlled a dominant share of wholesale transport could raise barriers for data center competitors and other carriers that need to lease fiber. Shedding part of that infrastructure answers the concern without breaking up the retail businesses.

Telecom, for its part, is integrating Movistar's assets while planning to divest the pieces that create the greatest competitive overlaps, Data Center Dynamics reports. The eventual transfer to Metrotel would make the fiber company one of the beneficiaries of the deal. What remains unstated is the scope and valuation of the assets — the terms of the proposal are not in the public record.

The proposal also shows how telecom regulators are starting to treat fiber as a distinct asset class from mobile spectrum. The remedy is not a spectrum carve-out or a subscriber cap; it is a transfer of physical network assets. That distinction matters for infrastructure investors, who increasingly underwrite fiber on the assumption that regulators will require separate ownership in concentrated markets.

For investors, the episode is a reminder that antitrust remedies can be a quiet source of fiber deals. The assets are wholesale-oriented, the customers are carriers, and the cash flow comes from transport and leasing rather than retail churn. That profile tends to attract infrastructure capital, and Metrotel's ownership fits that pattern. The structure also keeps the fiber out of the hands of a large retail competitor, which is exactly what a regulator wants when it blocks a merger on wholesale grounds.

The outcome still depends on the CNDC's final ruling, and the regulator could ask for more. For now, the proposal is the best read yet on how the regulator wants the Argentine market to look after the merger clears. What is already visible is the playbook: when the antitrust question is about infrastructure, the remedy is infrastructure. In Argentina, that means fiber is the currency of clearance.