In 2020 T-Mobile Netherlands aims to connect at least 100,000 households to its gigabit fibre-optic broadband access network in partnership with Primevest Capital Partners, focusing on locations where there is currently no fibre connection, it announced on its website.
Underlining that it is not following a ‘strategic overbuild’ policy, the operator said that in locations with existing third-party fibre infrastructure, it will utilise the existing networks ‘whenever possible’. T-Mobile’s CEO Soren Abildgaard stated: ‘I miss the point of creating a fibre-optic network where other parties have already done so or are still doing so. I endorse the conclusions of the Netherlands Authority for Consumers & Markets (ACM), which recently concluded that these practices only lead to delays in digitising the Netherlands … I call on all owners of fibre-optic networks to also open up their network to potential competitors for an attractive fee. That is not the case now. Some providers charge unreasonably high rates to others for access to their network. That is bad for competition on the fixed telecommunications market. And the worst thing is that the consumer is the victim.’
T-Mobile also gave an update on its initial fibre broadband rollout project begun in The Hague in June 2019, where it has so far connected ‘more than 20,000’ addresses out of a goal of 32,000 in the Segbroek district of the city. T-Mobile says it aims to provide ‘hundreds of thousands’ of premises with fibre-optic services ‘in the coming years’.