Vodafone and DT collaborate on FTTN deployment
This interesting piece of news hit just before the year ended. I don't have a lot of intel on it so far, except that it concerns a limited but large scale pilot deployment of up to 100.000 homes (depending on sources) in Germany. I don't have a whole lot of information at this stage, but this is what I understand: Vodafone is to deploy FTTN to 50k homes in Heilbronn, and DT is to do the same in Würzburg with (presumably) reciprocal access to each other's infrastructure.
Of course, the concept of shared deployment for VDSL is a little bit surprising and I'm hoping to talk to some of the people involved in the coming weeks to try and understand a little bit better how this will work in practice.
Still, it's pretty significant news if only because:
- it means that DT is in the process of moving away from its "never will share" stance, even though this still looks far away from open access
- it means that things are evolving somewhat in Germany beyond DT's largely unsuccessful VDSL offer. How different this will be remains to be seen, but...
- it means that Vodafone is making a serious move in the fixed market that could perhaps be replicated outside of Germany (where, to be fair, they own a sizeable wireline operation)
