Reach every corner of Spain with an optical fiber that offers at least 100Mbps It is the main objective of the 2025 plan of the Government of Spain, and for this it relies on the pace of deployment of operators facilitating investments with European and national funds. However, it seems that Vodafone already has enough with its current portfolio, adding both its FTTH fiber lines and its HFC coaxial lines inherited from the ONO purchase.
The information is extracted from a CNMC resolution published last October, a report in which the activity of the telecommunications sector between 2015 and 2020 has been reviewed and in which rules are set for the next 3 years , until 2023. It is from said report that it is extracted that Vodafone will use its current network and rent the network to others, such as Movistar, for the future of your growth in clients.
Vodafone will no longer expand its fiber optic network
At present, Vodafone already has wholesale access agreements to the fiber optic networks of both Telefónica and Orange, and Vodafone itself already overestimates its own accesses in its advertising, counting those of Orange (mainly) among them. Now the CNMC makes it clear that Vodafone will not deploy more fiber as it indicates that the footprint of the red operator will not grow in the coming years.
“As Vodafone does not plan to expand its footprint by its own means in the coming years, the gain in the share of alternative operators would be at the expense of movements within the current networks and the expansion of Orange and MásMóvil networks. The deployment of the latter’s network is closely linked to the mutualisation of the network with Orange and to the process of integrating the Euskaltel network within MásMóvil. ” – CNMC report, section III.2.2.1
In its resolution, the CNMC indicates that Orange and MásMóvil will be the catalysts for fiber networks in the coming years and that Vodafone will not deploy more networks. At least not in the next few years, it is not clear how long his vision will last into the future. However, just take a look at the UNICO rural fiber program to see that only Orange and MásMóvil showed up to carry out deployments in various provinces.
Everything indicates that Vodafone will focus from now on the deployment of its 5G coverage in the country, one of the pillars on which it will build its growth and which is highlighted in its latest Integrated Report 2020-21. We will see if this strategy helps you not lose much weight against (more and more) giants like MásMóvil and Orange that continue to grow in customers.
Via | Broadband