The European Commission has given the green light to the planned cooperation between Vodafone and Altice in the rollout of FTTH networks in Germany.
The new joint venture FibreCo is to invest up to €7 billion over a period of six years and provide up to seven million households with fibre connections.
“We will bring the first customers online before the end of this year,” Vodafone Deutschland CEO Philippe Rogge told German news agency dpa.
Around 80% of the rollout will be focused around large housing associations in Vodafone’s existing cable network footprint which are interested in FTTH upgrades. The remaining 20% of the deployment will be outside of Vodafone’s current footprint, focusing on neighbouring homes.
The partnership with Altice, announced in October 2022, is designed to complement the upgrade of Vodafone’s cable network, through which the telco provides broadband internet with up to 1Gbps to more than 24 million homes.
