Orange on Thursday announced that it aims to reach 14 million households with its Spanish fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network by 2020, building on an earlier target of 10 million homes by 2016.
The telco said its fibre network, which currently covers 5.2 million households, will cost a total of between €1.5 billion and €1.7 billion to build.
That figure includes all investments already made by Orange and its recently-acquired Jazztel subsidiary.
Orange said it will progressively increase the reach of its FTTH network between now and 2020, by which date it will have 80% coverage of all Spanish cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants.
"Only four months after the acquisition of Jazztel, the Orange group is reinforcing its investments in Spain, consolidating the position of its subsidiary as Europ e’s leading alternative operator in terms of fibre coverage," Orange said.
The telco also said it is investing €1.5 billion in its 4G network in Spain with a view to reaching 85% of the population by the end of this year, including coverage in 1,300 cities. It aims to cover 95% of the population in 2017.
"Both deployment programmes, in FTTH and 4G networks, are part of Orange’s strategy to invest in very high speed broadband networks in order to meet strong demand from customers for content and services," Orange said.
Orange solidified its position in the Spanish telecoms market with the €3.4 billion acquisition of fixed broadband provider Jazztel, which it completed in August.
The appetite for converged services in Spain pushed a number of telcos to flesh out their offerings. Incumbent Telefonica already had strong fixed and mobile arms, but mobile-led players like Orange and Vodafone turned to M&A to build up the fixed side of their businesses; Vodafone acquired cable operator Ono in 2014.
This summer virtual mobile operator MasMovil bought some fibre assets from Jazztel and brokered a wholesale deal for copper xDSL network access, declaring itself Spain’s fourth national operator.
Meanwhile, the market’s fourth mobile network operator, TeliaSonera-owned Yoigo, continues to struggle and it appears a sale could be back on the cards. Bloomberg sources recently named MasMovil as a possible buyer, along with private equity firms.
