A joint venture between Liberty Global Ventures and InfraVia Capital Partners, Liberty Networks, has began rolling out a new full fibre network in Germany branded helloFiber.

Construction of the new fibre brand starts this week in Rudersberg, a municipality in the Rems-Murr district of Baden-Württemberg. The brand is focussed on rural areas that don’t currently have fibre broadband services, and is apparently in active discussions with further regions who are in the same boat.

In order to fund the rollout, Liberty Networks is in the process of raising cash and ‘leveraging the long-standing expertise of its shareholders in financing critical broadband infrastructure projects throughout Europe’ – which sounds like it means raising some more cash.

Liberty Global is already familiar with the German fibre market having once operated Unitymedia in the region, which reached 13 million homes and 7.2 million customers by the time of its sale to Vodafone in 2019.

“This ground-breaking ceremony marks the first step in Liberty Networks Germany mission to roll out powerful full-fibre broadband in underserved regions of the country,” said Christian Böing, CEO, Liberty Networks Germany. “We look forward to see Liberty Networks Germany continue to build partnerships with municipalities to deliver powerful full-fibre broadband infrastructure to the parts of Germany that need it the most.”

Liberty Global and InfraVia are also co funding a new as yet unnamed UK fibre JV alongside Telefonica and VMO2, which will roll out fibre-to-the-home to greenfield premises across the UK, with an initial target of 5 million homes not currently served by VMO2’s network by 2026, and an opportunity to expand to an additional 2 million premises. Liberty Global, Telefónica and InfraVia Capital Partners are putting £4.5 billion behind the project, partly through borrowing.

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