Italian telecom company Wind Tre has notified trade unions that Swedish investment fund EQT will acquire a 60 percent stake in its spun-off infrastructure business.

This comes around a month after reports first suggested that Wind Tre was in discussions with EQT to spin off its network assets.

These assets are comprised of radio access, fixed access, and transport network assets.

The remaining 40 percent of the separated network's company will be held by Wind Tre's owner CK Hutchison, via CK Hutchison Group Telecom Italy Investments.

Separation of the networks unit will be completed by October 1 and is expected to involve the transfer of 2,000 of its 6,500 employees in Italy to the networks business.

However, reports from multiple publications, including Telecoms.com, have noted that Wind Tre faces industrial action over its plan to spin off its mobile network, with Italian union Fistel CISL unimpressed with the restructuring.

It's reported that Fistel CISL has called Wind Tre's plan 'a technological impoverishment of the country’s second-largest telephone operator, that also has probable repercussions in the area of employment,' adding that the union plans to fight back against the proposals.

The Wind Tre operation is the result of a history of mobile mergers. Italian mobile operator Andala was launched in 1999 and then acquired by what was then Hutchison Whampoa and renamed H3G/Three Italy in 2000. Elsewhere, Wind was established in late 1997 by Enel, France Télécom (now Orange), and Deutsche Telekom and sold in 2005 to Weather Investments and then Veon in 2011. CK Hutchison then acquired part of Wind in 2016 and renamed it Wind Tre, before acquiring the entire company in 2018.

As for EQT, the company hasn't commented publicly on the proposed deal but was recently linked with a potential takeover of data center operator Global Switch.