New business is valued at €70 billion by Deloitte
Greek mobile operator Wind Hellas plans to put its fibre broadband assets into a new open access fibre wholesaling company.
Hellenic Openfiber will include fibre cable, active equipment and the housing ducts and sites that comprise its current backbone infrastructure, reports Telecoms.com.
Wind will retain the active equipment needed for its mobile business. Hellenic Openfiber will get 3,379 kilometres of fibre network, including 595 kilometres of cable that is yet to be laid and the 170 kilometres of fibre that Wind leases from Greece’s national power corporation.
Wholesale fibre is new market trend
Deloitte has valued the new fibre entity at €69.9 million, including assets worth just over €54 million. Revenues for this year will be around €19.2 million and earnings €7.8 million.
Wholesale-only fibre models bring greater return on investment opportunities and this is ‘the new trend in the market’, according to a Deloitte report attached when the operator unveiled its split plan. Wind is now Hellenic Openfiber’s top customer, but other target clients could be rival Greek mobile operators Cosmote, Vodafone and Inalan.
Fibre penetration in Greece is challenging
According to Deloitte the financial crisis in Greece and the country’s challenging terrain have severely constrained the rollout of fibre infrastructure. The European Commission says there were 27,000 active superfast broadband connections in 2020. The FTTH Council Europe reports that in September 2020 just 9.9 per cent of homes had coverage but it was taken up by fewer than one per cent of households.
Wind has 110,000 active wholesale customers for next-generation access, which will be transferred to the new entity.
Wind Hellas is in the process of being acquired by United Group, which plans to merge the telco with its Greek pay TV provider Nova to create a unified player. If so, it will be well-positioned to compete more effectively in the retail market, says Telecoms.com.