Vodafone on Wednesday touted the progress of its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) deployment in various European markets, including the launch of its 1 Gbps service in Ireland and the expansion of its Portuguese network.
As reported on Monday, Siro, a joint venture between Vodafone Ireland and local electricity supplier ESB, began offering a gigabit FTTH service in Carrigaline, County Cork, in the south of Ireland.
The town is the first of 51 urban fibre hubs in the country. Siro eventually aims to cover 500,000 premises across Ireland by the end of 2018.
Vodafone also confirmed on Wednesday the €125 million expansion of its Portuguese FTTH network. To date, the operator has covered 2.2 million premises; it now aims to cover 2.75 million across the country by the end of 2016.
"The successful economies of the future will be gigabit societies with ultrafast fibre-optic connections available everywhere. Vodafone is playing its part in realising that objective," said Markus Reinisch, Vodafone’s public policy director, in a statement.
Vodafone reaffirmed its commitment to connecting 2 million premises in Spain to fibre through its co-investment with rival Orange, and said it is holding discussions with Italian electricity company Enel about building a national wholesale FTTH network.
"We have demonstrated that we invest in fibre-to-the-home when conditions allow us to do so, working together with other forward-looking companies to build the ultrafast digital infrastructure that Europe needs," Reinisch said.
