Belgium incumbent Proximus will invest €3 billion in the coming ten years to accelerate the roll-out of fibre in Belgium.
Proximus will cover more than 85% of all enterprises and more than 50% of all households with fibre.
Dense city areas will be fully fibred, starting with a progressive roll-out in six cities early 2017: Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Ghent, Namur and Roeselare.
In 2004, Proximus (formerly Belgacom) was the first operator in Europe to start building a national fibre network. And today, Proximus is among the world’s top five operators for the proportion of fibre in its VDSL network with over 21,000 kilometres of optical fibre connecting its street cabinets.
Since the launch of its Fit for Growth strategy, Proximus has rolled out fibre in over 80% of business zones in Belgium and more than 6,000 of its enterprise customers are connected to Fiber today.
Connecting businesses remains a priority for Proximus. From a financial and operational point of view, it clearly makes sense to combine the deployment of Fibre-To-The-Business in dense city areas with bringing Fibre inside homes and apartments, as it allows the roll-out of Fibre-To-The-Home to be done at an acceptable cost in these areas.
“By investing €3 billion in the national roll-out of this future-proof next generation network, we will allow our customers to fully capture the opportunities of the digital era, bringing download and upload speeds in Belgium to an unprecedented level,” said Dominique Leroy, CEO Proximus.
“Fibre offers customers the ultimate broadband experience to surf, stream, game and work at the speed of light. When we say that we’re going to accelerate the deployment of fibre in Belgium, we really mean it! Every minute, we will cover an extra home with Fiber.”
“Proximus has been at the forefront of broadband innovation for years, with Belgian and world premieres in ADSL, VDSL2 and vectoring technologies, as well as in fibre,” said Geert Standaert, CTO Proximus.
“Today, Proximus is pioneering once more as we will be the first operator on the Belgian market to bring the incredible power of fibre inside existing homes and apartments. This is great news for Belgian customers, as optical fibre can be considered as the ultimate broadband technology, allowing us to meet customer needs in the very long-term.”
