BrazilAnalysys Mason advises KPN and T-Mobile on fibre investments
Telecom companies KPN and T-Mobile have both attracted financial partners to ramp up their fibre rollout to households and businesses across the Netherlands. Analysys Mason advised both operators on their respective deals.
Fibre-to-the-home (FttH) – or fibre-to-the-premises – refers to the laying of fibre optic cables to the last mile of a home or business, bringing high-speed broadband connectivity straight to the doorstep. The capital-intensive offering has come to be crucial in a cut-throat telecom market.
KPN and T-Mobile are both looking to up the ante in this space, and have secured financiers to support the sizeable infrastructure investments. KPN is now backed by pension investment firm APG, while DTCP – the digital infrastructure investment arm of T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom – is partnering with investment fund KKR to rollout its FttH programme.
Telecom-specialised management consulting firm Analysys Mason supported both telecom players on their joint ventures – leveraging prior experience on big-ticket fibre deals.
KPN
KPN is already racing towards 3 million fibre optic connections in The Netherlands, with plans to clock 500,000 new households per year to add another 2.5 million by 2025. By 2026, the telco hopes to occupy 80% of the country’s FttH landscape, and plans are well on track: KPN has added 100,000 new connections since the start of 2021 alone.
A €880 million joint venture split 50:50 with Netherlands-headquartered pension and asset management fund APG is now set to support the further rollout, with a partial focus on the ‘long tail’ of KPN customers – around 685,000 households and 225,000 businesses in villages and smaller business centres across The Netherlands. The pair are set to spend over €1.2 billion on the joint venture, mostly financed with debt.
APG will make a cash payment of €220 million (pre-tax) up front to be part of the joint venture – to be doubled via annual instalments depending on progress. “It is an attractive transaction, creating additional value for all stakeholders,” noted KPN CEO Joost Farwerck.
T-Mobile
T-Mobile is in relatively early stages of its FttH rollout in the Netherlands – currently supplying 65,000 households in The Hague, Eindhoven and Rotterdam, with plans to double this figure via a partnership with asset managers Primevest. A new 50:50 joint venture – Open Dutch Fiber – between New-York-based global investment giant KKR and DTPC could boost this coverage tenfold.
Open Dutch Fiber is an open access fibre network available to all telcos, which aims to bring 1 million new FttH connections across The Netherlands in the next five years. Owners DTPC and KKR plan to invest at least $700 million in the project, which has now signed T-Mobile as its first tenant.
FttH competitiveness aside, T-Mobile Netherlands CEO Søren Abildgaar highlighted how Open Dutch Fiber will use renewable energy sources and minimize power consumption, while the firm’s commercial director Tisha van Lammeren noted the project’s importance in a wider digital transformation context. “It will help the Netherlands become a digital leader again,” she said.
