Belgian full-service provider Proximus has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a consortium of Belgian financial partners including I4B (the Belgian Infrastructure Fund, acting as an anchor investor), with the aim to cover an additional 1.7 million homes and businesses in sparsely populated areas with fibre. Subject to a definitive agreement expected at the end of the year, this deployment would supplement the operator’s existing fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) rollout plans and make it possible to extend coverage to 95% of all Belgian homes and businesses by 2032. The company notes the planned extension is also an important step in its ambition to eventually offer a gigabit network throughout the country, with fixed wireless access technology leveraged for the remaining 5%.
Proximus announced earlier this week that it had reached the milestone of one million homes and businesses connected to its open access FTTP network in around 50 towns and cities. The pace of deployment is rapidly accelerating and is closing in on Proximus’ ambition to cover 22% of all homes and businesses by the end of 2022.