KPN launches 1Gbps service as Dutch broadband battle heats up

Dutch telco KPN has launched a 1Gbps fibre broadband service for €65 a month.

The new offering provides upload speeds of 500Mbps, with a symmetrical service promised by the end of the year.

The 1Gbps service is available to over 1.2 million homes currently, and the operator expects that all fibre broadband customers will be able to receive it by the end of next year. Areas covered so far include Baarn, Barneveld, Bilthoven, Culemborg, Doetinchem, Emmeloord, Emmen, Houten, Huizen and Noordwijk, and the operator is marketing it in parts of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Eindhoven, Utrecht and The Hague.

KPN has committed to connect about one million additional homes to its fibre offering by the end of 2021, on top of the two million already connected.

KPN’s main rival in the Dutch market, Liberty Global and Vodafone JV VodafoneZiggo, has already launched 1Gbps broadband in regions including Utrecht, Hilversum and The Hague using DOCSIS 3.1 technology over its HFC network. However, the cable operator is currently only offering 50Mbps upstream.

The company has said that half of the 7.2 million homes connected to the Ziggo cable network will be able to access 1Gbps downstream by the end of this year, or about 1.7 million of its four million customers. Cities pencilled in for launches later this year include msterdam, Apeldoorn, Arnhem, Eindhoven, Groningen, Nijmegen, Rotterdam, Tilburg and Wageningen.