Telenet and Fluvius joint-venture named Wyre

Micha Berger

Belgium’s Telenet and Fluvius have revealed its fibre joint- venture under the working title Netco will be named Wyre. 

The announcement comes as the European Commission gave green light to Telenet and Fluvius to go ahead with their planned partnership to build out fibre in Flanders and Brussels in May.

Wyre will operate an open access network, providing wholesale access to interested retail telecommunications operators, including Telenet and Orange. Both Telenet and Fluvius will transfer their existing HFC network and fiber assets to Wyre.

The new company will deploy a hybrid network strategy to enable speeds of up to 10 Gbps for all its customers. Up to 78% of all homes in Flanders and parts of Brussels are expected to be passed by FTTH, with the majority already in the first eight years. In other areas, NetCo will further upgrade and expand the technology of the existing HFC network. Overall the partners will invest up to €2 billion.

The infrastructure company will start building the network for an early launch in July this year. Micha Berger who is currently special projects lead at Telenet Berger will become CEO of Wyre as of closing of the transaction

According to the companies, “Wyre stands for the best connectivity. The letter Y in the middle of Wyre refers to ‘You’ and the ambition to take everyone into the digital future by continuing to upgrade the existing network as well as showing the way to fibre-optic cable. “