Play à PON my network
iliad Group has announced it has completed the sale of a 50% stake in iliad’s Polish entity Polski Światłowód Otwarty (PSO) which owns the UPC network infrastructure in Poland to InfraVia. The joint venture announced in June last year, will be jointly controlled by InfraVia and iliad’s Polish mobile operator Play, reports Digital TV Europe. The existing infrastructure is an hybrid of co-axial copper cable and optical fire. This hybrid fibre coax (HFC) network moves data at up to 1 Gbps, but it will have to be upgraded massively to incorporate FTTH technology and to meet with PŚO’s investment programme plans to cover over 6 million households.
The fibre network and infrastructure will be upgraded to the XGS-PON standard of passive optical networking, as made by Nokia, enabling operators to use the PŚO network to provide FTTH Internet connections at content throughputs of up to 5 Gbps. The existing PŚO network covers households in 14 provinces and almost 200 municipalities in Poland. The first operators to work with PŚO will be Play and its subsidiary UPC Polska, which service over 1.4 million subscribers on the PŚO network. PŚO will make its network available to all operators based on an open access model.
This transaction marks a turning point in the growth of the iliad Group’s business in Poland, according to iliad’s CEO Thomas Reynaud. “The partnership with InfraVia will provide a boost for the fixed Internet services market in Poland through an open access model, offering all operators equal access to the country’s largest fibre network, which will eventually cover half of all Polish households. The planned investment program will significantly contribute to the development of Polish regions, cities and industry.”
Iliad Telecom boss Xavier Niel recently claimed his telco is effectively being punished for making a bigger commitment to upgrading network technology than any other competitor. Niel told a French senate committee hearing this week that Iliad has re-invested a significantly higher proportion of its revenue into laying new fibre, among other things.
In return the telco has been threatened with punishment at times. In France, for example, it could be hit by demands from Orange France for an increase in unbundling fees for its copper network, as Orange called for the closure of the legacy network to be expedited.
There will be two effects according to Niel. Risk averse telcos would be dissuaded from committing to more investment and the take-up of fibre in countries such as France would be slowed. Niel said that increasing the cost of accessing copper effectively maintains the monopoly of the national operator in regions without real competition.