The past year has seen a dramatic acceleration of the trend for Europe’s mobile operators to offload their towers and other cell sites, in order to release shareholder value locked up in these assets, and to make network running and expansion costs more predictable. Vodafone, TIM, Telefónica, Deutsche Telekom and other majors have been reorganizing their passive infrastructure assets in various ways, while some operators, such as Play in Poland, have sold them off completely – often to Europe’s largest neutral host towerco, Cellnex of Spain. Now French incumbent Orange is joining the part, forming an autonomous tower company called Totem. This will still be under the telco’s control, for now at least, and will be established with an initial…