Vodafone completes sale of 50% of German fibre JV to Altice

Vodafone has completed the sale of 50% of its German Fibre-to-the-Home company (FibreCo) to Altice. The creation of the JV received European Commission approval last month.

The jointly owned FibreCo will deploy fibre-to-the-home to up to seven million homes in Germany over a six-year period.

Over the rollout period, FibreCo intends to invest up to €7 billion, which will be partly financed by debt. Total debt facilities of up to €4.6 billion have been arranged with a group of leading financial institutions to support the network deployment, according to the pair.

Vodafone is expected to receive cash proceeds from Altice in excess of Vodafone’s share of equity contributions over time.

Vodafone said that the partnership with Altice is complementary to its own upgrade plans for its existing hybrid fibre cable network.

The latter involves bringing fibre connections closer to all connected homes through node splitting and a DOCSIS 3.1 ‘high split’, which the operator says enables download speeds of over 3Gbps.

Vodafone says that these upgrade plans, coupled with next generation technology advances, such as DOCSIS 4.0, provide a path to 10Gbps speeds across our hybrid fibre cable network over time.

Approximately 80% of the Vodafone-Altice JV’s rollout will be focused around large housing associations in Vodafone’s existing hybrid fibre cable network footprint which are interested in FTTH upgrades.

The remaining 20% of the Roll-out will be outside of Vodafone’s current footprint, focusing on neighbouring homes

FibreCo will offer wholesale access to all telecommunications service providers in Germany. Vodafone Germany will act as the anchor tenant, based on an agreement with FibreCo.

Within FibreCo’s footprint, Vodafone Germany has committed to market the network to new customers on an exclusive basis, while Vodafone Germany’s existing network will continue to service customers who do not wish to migrate to FTTH. Vodafone Germany is not providing FibreCo with any minimum revenue or volume commitment.