Vodafone Spain is moving a piece in one of the areas where it sees the most potential: the wholesale business. The operator, controlled by the British fund Zegona, has appointed Carlos Cortés as the new head of this division, according to company sources. Cortés previously worked at Aire Networks (Grupo Aire), where he served as the wholesale segment’s commercial director, and will replace Luis Suñer at the helm of this area.
The appointment comes at a time when Vodafone wants to accelerate growth in its wholesale arm, a business segment gaining importance in the Spanish market as telecom companies seek agreements to share infrastructure, expand coverage, and offer services to third parties without bearing all the deployment costs alone.
A rapid transition in a “strategic” division
The change is notable given the timing: Suñer had been in the position for about nine months and had a prior career spanning 15 years at Jazztel, where he held various executive roles. Meanwhile, Cortés arrives with commercial experience in the telco sector and has also worked at companies like Phone House and Motorola. His profile aligns well with a division focused on closing deals with operators and partners who “lease” network capacity to build their own offerings.
A business driven by mobile and fiber agreements
In the past two years, Vodafone Spain has been forging a series of wholesale alliances. These include agreements with PTV Telecom (October 2024) and Silbö Telecom (June 2025), as well as the partnership with Catalan telecom Vera, which began deploying this month.
For Vera, the framework agreement provides mutual and preferential access to infrastructure, including mobile, fiber (FTTH), and network access services to support high capacities. The initial phase involves a progressive migration of Vera’s mobile service to Vodafone’s network over the coming months, aiming for its customers to access 5G coverage in 4,184 municipalities and a fiber footprint exceeding 30 million housing units.
Context: sharing networks also in mobile
This move comes as industry circles revisit the idea of mobile network sharing, a model known in jargon as “ranco” (shared network). According to an interview with Eamonn O’Hare, president and CEO of Zegona, Vodafone Spain is in talks with Orange and Telefónica to explore a joint mobile network sharing company, similar in concept to recent fiber wholesale ventures such as Fiberpass with Telefónica and PremiumFiber with MasOrange.
Why it matters
The wholesale division isn’t just about generating “volume” revenue; it also allows Vodafone to better monetize its network assets and increase its prominence in a market where increasingly more operators—big and small—are forming agreements to accelerate expansion, control costs, and compete in coverage and services without duplicating investments. In this context, hiring a sales profile from a specialized connectivity group like Aire Networks signals a clear internal priority: closing more deals, faster, and with greater ambition.
via: europapress