Swiss telecommunications providers Salt and Sunrise have agreed on a strategic partnership to supply households across Switzerland with fibre-optic-based broadband connections (FTTH).
Swiss Open Fiber, which will be founded for this purpose, is an open platform accessible to all providers, according to a joint statement. The joint venture will be co-owned by Salt and Sunrise with equal shareholding and a prospective equity partner.
The chairman of Swiss Open Fiber is Marc Furrer, former president of Federal Communications Commission ComCom.
Swiss Open Fiber has set itself the goal of supplying 1.5 million households with a total investment of up to CHF3 billion (€2.84 billion) over the next five to seven years. The focus will be on areas which are not sufficiently served with broadband access in order to further promote digitisation in non-urban areas.
While Salt and Sunrise will act as anchor tenants, the infrastructure network will be made available to other competitors so that they can offer high-speed broadband services to their customers. Rollout is expected to commence in Q4 2020.
“In 2008, we initiated the round table, which enabled us to connect around one third of the Swiss population to FTTH. Now we want the rest of Switzerland to benefit from high-quality FTTH products which are essential for home office, home education and home entertainment,” said Furrer.
“The planned joint venture will bring this high-speed connectivity to most of the remaining market while ensuring infrastructure competition,” stressed Furrer.
