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Friday 21 November 2008

The Dutch are at it again

Seems Reggefiber and KPN are chucking 6-7 billion euros at FTTH in the Netherlands over the next 5-7 years with an ambitious aim of 100% FTTH coverage.

Nice to know other countries have companies/telcos who have seen the light, literally. Seems the Dutch regulator OPTA will make an announcement next Monday about the issue, and a green light has already been given by the competition authority (our Monopolies Commission, at a guess). A neat JV will be put in place, Glashart, of which KPN will have 41% of the holding with the option to increase that to a majority stake.

100% coverage. Hmmm, let's hazard a guess what percentage FTTH there will be in the UK by the time this type of project comes to fruition elsewhere in the EU, shall we? Especially after BT's 'threats' this week about not doing anything much without a far looser regulatory environment. (Which actually implies consumers and competition will be shoved into the background if the threat is taken seriously and BT (and its shareholders) is given the chance to have it all their own way).

I wish it was a co-operative JV, but even so, lucky bloody Dutch!!!

2 comments:

Carl said...

Amusingly this got scaled back with much of the FTTP deployment replaced by FTTC due to poor uptake and economics not making sense :)

Cybersavvy UK said...

And competition. You can't have the uptake and win market share if the consumers have a choice of something better at a similar or lower price....