State-backed full-service provider Swisscom has reached the halfway point of its nationwide network upgrade and expansion programme having deployed ‘ultrafast’ broadband to the municipality of Saint-Barthelemy, the 1,111th community to receive the upgrade.
Swisscom is aiming to provide 2,222 communities across the country – representing around 90% of the population – with access to broadband speeds of between 80Mbps and 1Gbps by the end of 2021. To that end, the company is investing CHF1.6 billion (USD1.61 billion) annually in IT and infrastructure. Swisscom added that it has installed more than 1.14 million km of fibre-optic cabling so far, and more than three million homes and businesses are connected to its ultrafast broadband network.