Orange Belgium and rival Proximus have said they remain in negotiations over a collaboration on rural fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) rollout in the country’s southern region.
Speaking during Proximus’ latest results presentation, for the year to 31 December 2024 (FY24), Chief Financial Officer Mark Reid confirmed it was “still in negotiation with Orange on that part of the territory”.
During Orange’s own FY24 session, Chief Executive Xavier Pichon said the operator was discussing a tie-up with Proximus, and that it would focus on “value creation and customer access to Gigabit networks”.
He indicated that news on the talks would arrive in the “upcoming months or quarters, depending on the output outcome of the negotiations”.
Deals aim to boost Belgium’s under-powered FTTH engine
The talks — said to focus on mutual expansion of full-fibre infrastructure in less economically attractive regions of the Walloon Region — were revealed by (now-Vodafone-bound) Proximus CEO Guillaume Boutin earlier in the year.
They form part of a wider shift by Belgium’s telcos towards a more collaborative approach to FTTH buildout, to save on capital — and follow on from a similarly focused (but provisional) deal between Proximus and Wyre, an infra partnership between rivals Telenet and Fluvius, concentrating on Belgium’s northern Flanders Region.
Regulator Institut belge des services postaux et des télécommunications (BIPT) signalled that it was open to formation of FibreCo tie-ups in late-2023, to give a much need boost to rollout, and indicated it was prepared to push back finalisation of its latest market analysis to give operators more scope for talks.
Initially, it set a deadline of May 2024 for FTTH cooperation agreements to be firmed up, but talks have evidently dragged on much further.
Battle of the Belge
The talks between Orange and Proximus follow a busy period of deal-making and asset reshaping in Belgium’s broadband infra market, as fibre players wrestle with the financial burden of FTTH expansion.
Proximus is targeting a footprint of 4.2 million homes and businesses (including about four-fifth of Belgian households) by 2028, through in-house build and side-ventures, and claims to have reached 2.22 million at the end of 2024. In 2024, it re-consolidated Fiberklaar, formerly a fibre joint venture with investment group EQT, in a perceived move to help facilitate the pending, Flanders-focused build tie-up with Wyre. Fiberklaar aims to pass 1.5 million premises by 2028. Despite the talks with Orange, Boutin has insisted Proximus has no equivalent plan to re-absorb Unifiber, another fibre wholesale JV that focuses on the Walloon region and is co-owned by European infra player Eurofiber, targeting 600,000 premises passed by 2028.
Historically mobile-centred Orange also spent 2024 working to expand and strengthen its wireline presence, taking 100%-ownership of VOO, a cable operator focused on the Walloon region and part of the Brussels area. It is also rolling out FTTH, with the aim of covering two thirds of the former VOO footprint by 2040, and has coverage in the north of the country via a bilateral fixed wholesale relationship with Telenet, formed in 2023. Overall, Orange claims ‘Gigabit’ coverage across 95% of Belgium households.
As well as the Orange tie-up and pending Proximus deal, Telenet has been reshaping its business to support a ‘fibre-up’ programme across its cable footprint, which is said to cover about 3.5 million homes. Wyre’s launch in 2023 paved the way for a major cable-to-FTTH migration project targeting 78% of Telenet and Fluvius’ combined footprint in Flanders, by 2038. In early-2024, parent Liberty Global established a holding company to manage (and develop synergies between) Telenet and Dutch interest VodafoneZiggo.
New entrant Digi is also rolling out fibre, with a plan to cover two million households within five years. It debuted fixed and mobile services in Belgium in December, although the wireline offerings were confined to certain municipalities of Anderlecht and Molenbeek.