Also in today s EMEA regional roundup: Fastweb taps Amdocs for network inventory upgrade; MTN seeks $5 billion valuation of mobile money unit ahead of stake sale; A1 Telekom Austria brings your package inside.
Telecom Italia (TIM) is congratulating itself on completing its fiber rollout in the north-east Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, using a mix of FTTC, FTTH, FWA and satellite technologies. Those households and businesses connected to FTTH will enjoy downlink speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s; up 200 Mbit/s must suffice for those on FTTC. Across the country, says the operator, TIM s fiber network is now available to 92% of those households that use the fixed network. Earlier this month TIM announced the completion of shareholder agreements with KKR Infrastructure and Swisscom-owned Fastweb that, in theory at least, allow FiberCop, Italy s last-mile network grid, to commence operations. (See FiberCop is go after KKR and Fastweb firm up stakes and Italy s TIM seeks co-investors to
Orange Poland has announced a partnership with Dutch pension fund APG that aims to speed the rollout and reduce the cost of its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network throughout the country.
The operator, which is majority owned by France-based Orange, said it has created a 50:50 joint venture called FiberCo with APG, which is the asset management division of ABP.
The new JV will take over 2.4 million connections, including 1.7 million households that are set to be passed by the network in the next five years.
The remaining connections are to be contributed by Orange Poland, which covered 5 million households with its fiber network at the end of 2020.
News Analysis Robert Clark 4/12/2021
The Biden Administration s $100 billion broadband plan marks the end of an era.
Since telecom reform began in the mid-80s with the breakup of the old AT&T it s been big telecom that has driven the industry, constrained by no more than light-touch regulation.
That s been the case not just in the US but across the OECD and much of the developing world.
The new Biden plan, hazy as it still is, drives the last nail in the coffin of the old regime.
Just as the deregulation era was driven by wider economic trends and new technology that rendered obsolete the natural monopoly concept, today s change is driven by an equally broad recognition that we need governments to do certain things, like manage health crises and ensure access to affordable broadband.
It s been several months in the making, but FiberCop, Italy s last-mile network grid, has finally moved into the operational stage with an enterprise value of 7.7 billion (US$9 billion).
Telecom Italia (TIM) announced the completion of shareholder agreements with KKR Infrastructure and Swisscom-owned Fastweb, meaning that KKR has acquired a 37.5% stake at a value of around 1.8 billion ($2.1 billion). Fastweb has also transferred its 20% stake in FlashFiber, its joint venture with TIM (which holds an 80% stake), into FiberCop and taken a 4.5% stake.
FiberCop now combines TIM s secondary network (from the street cabinet to customers homes) and the fiber network developed by FlashFiber.
Podcast: The Divide Fiber Broadband Association s Gary Bolton on the good news, good news for fiber 4/1/2021
On this episode of The Divide, we hear from Gary Bolton, President and CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association: an organization of over 350 companies focused on delivering an all-fiber broadband network across the Americas.
As the head of the Fiber Broadband Association, Gary is unsurprisingly pretty optimistic about fiber s potential and progress. We discuss why he says the US needs a fiber-first strategy and the legislation in Congress that could get us there, why hype around satellite broadband could be a disaster for communities, and why municipalities and electric cooperatives are becoming the biggest emerging class of fiber deployers.