Nokia and Eurofiber hatch a plan to accelerate fibre roll out in Europe

Finnish kit vendor Nokia and pan-European fibreco Eurofiber Group have signed an agreement to accelerate fibre roll outs in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands with optical transport and datacenter switching.

The firms say they have signed something called a frame agreement which includes the multi country DWDM roll out, datacenter switching and other elements all of which is in the service of increasing Eurofiber’s footprint. The agreement covers all Eurofiber affiliates.

Eurofiber and Nokia will have you know they have been getting stuck in already with the expansion. Within Eurofiber France, the first optical networks are currently under deployment in the south and north of the country, and Nokia is also deploying a DWDM city network in Germany for the Berlin based joint venture Vattenfall-Eurofiber. Over in Belgium, both companies agreed to renew the nationwide DWDM network.

These networks will bolster the existing 60,000 km of Eurofiber fiber infrastructure.

“Nokia is proud to add Eurofiber as a customer,” said Jan van Tetering, Senior Vice President Europe at Nokia. “We are determined to serve Eurofiber Group and its affiliates with our strong portfolio and presence in the four countries where they operate and help them expand their Open Networks’ footprint. This frame agreement is a solid foundation for our joint growth business ambition in Europe, sharing the same values to operate in an ethical, sustainable and secure way.”

Eric Kuisch, COO Eurofiber Group, said: “Eurofiber has an ambitious growth agenda in Western Europe. A fully integrated high capacity DWDM network, and future-proof, highly secure datacenter equipment are main technological enablers to realize these ambitions. We are looking forward to partner with Nokia in providing our customers with the highest quality available.”

There seems to be no shortage of investment money available for large scale fibre deployments all around the world, and since many see this generation of broadband as the final word in non-mobile connectivity, you can see why it would represent a solid, long term investment choice for VCs and other such firms.

The FTTH Council Europe put out a report on the European fibre market earlier in the year, in which it said the total number of homes passed with fibre to the home (FTTH) and fibre to the building (FTTB) in the EU39 reached nearly 198.4 million in September 2021, compared to 176.3 million in September 2020. The main increases in that time frame were in France (+4.3 million), United Kingdom (+3.4 million), Germany (+2.4 million) and Italy (+1.5 million).

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