Nokia and Infracapital, the infrastructure arm of M&G Investments, announced they have been awarded a tender by the government of Poland for the design, construction and operation of advanced fibre networks to deliver broadband services to residents and schools in 12 currently under-served regions, mainly in the northern and central parts of the country.
The companies noted that they additionally expect to sign a further agreement covering a 13th region next month.
Under the agreement, Nokia will deploy networks based on GPON technology designed to deliver speeds of 100 Mbit/s to more than 400,000 homes and approximately 2,500 schools in the largely rural voivodships (provinces) of Lodzkie, Swietokrzyskie, Kujawsko-Pomorskie and Warminsko-Mazurskie. Capital expenditure for the project is expected to be approximately Euro300 million.
The networks deployed will be operated as wholesale, open access networks, with services to be marketed and delivered by retail service providers. The initiative was launched by Poland’s Ministry of Digitalisation and is subsidised by grants from the EU under its EU Digital Agenda 2020 program, which has a goal of expanding fast broadband services with download speeds of at least 30 Mbit/s to all EU citizens, and at least 100 Mbit/s to 50% of citizens, by 2020.
The agreement specifies that from 2018 the under-served regions of Poland covered by the project will have access to a high-speed, resilient fibre network capable of supporting ultra-broadband services for schools, e-health and other digital services, as well as residential triple-play services.
The project will specifically feature Nokia’s fibre access platform, the 7360 Intelligent Service Access Manager (ISAM) FX, the new Nokia 7362 ISAM DF small form factor fibre access platform and its 7368 ISAM ONT. Nokia will also provide the 5520 Access Management System for network management, and its Network Analyzer – Fiber operational support platform.
In addition to the broadband network infrastructure, Nokia will also provide professional and maintenance services. Nokia is responsible for the project management, planning, design and deployment of both the broadband and passive fibre network.
Infracapital is a major European infrastructure investor that is managed by M&G Investment Management, the European investment management arm of Prudential plc. Infracapital has to date raised over GBP 2.6 billion via four European infrastructure funds.
