Vodafone Portugal and Portugal Telecom have agreed a 25-year fibre sharing agreement which will significantly increase both operators’ footprints.
From December the telcos will deploy and share fibre reaching 900,000 homes in Portugal, allowing each…
Vodafone Portugal and Portugal Telecom have agreed a 25-year fibre sharing agreement which will significantly increase both operators’ footprints.
From December the telcos will deploy and share fibre reaching 900,000 homes in Portugal, allowing each to offer high-speed data services to an additional 450,000 homes and businesses.
Portugal Telecom said the agreement would take its fibre-to-the-home network to 2.1 million homes passed.
Vodafone commented that the pact with Portugal Telecom complemented its current fibre-to-the-home deployment programme, which aims to reach 1.5 million homes by mid-2015.
In February Vodafone’s CEO Vittorio Colao was quoted as saying that the telco may look to expand by acquiring smaller cablecos, which came up for sale in the country, or build fibre in their areas.
Any deal would be a continuation of Vodafone’s converged strategy, most recently seen across the border in Spain with the €7.2bn acquisition of cableco Ono.
Vodafone is the second largest mobile operator in Portugal after incumbent Portugal Telecom. However, its position in the market has come under threat after number three player Optimus merged with cableco Zon Multimedia last year.
Cabovisao, owned by multinational holding Altice, is the largest independent cableco in the country.
Vodafone Portugal has more than 5.4 million mobile subscribers and around 240,000 fixed broadband customers, 190,000 of which also subscribe to pay-TV.
