Vodafone Portugal has reached a network sharing agreement with NOS (formerly Portugal Telecom Multimedia), a Portuguese media holding company whose main assets include a satellite, cable operator, and ISP, a mobile phone operator, a movie distributor (NOS Audiovisuais) and a virtual carrier of mobile phone services.
Under the deal, the companies will deploy and share a fibre-to-the-home network which will be marketable to around 2.6 million homes and businesses in Portugal. The two companies will provide reciprocal access to each other’s networks on commercially agreed terms.
Key elements include:
- Vodafone Portugal will gain access to 1.3 million homes and businesses in new areas, consisting of new fibre builds in NOS’s current cable footprint, NOS’s existing fibre reach in areas greenfield to Vodafone, and building homes in new areas. This will increase its total coverage from 2.7 million to around 4.0 million, representing 80% of the households in the country.
- Each party will deploy, but not share, the link between the central office and the fibre backbone, active equipment and CPEs. Customer connections and activations will be independent of each other.
- Marketing of services across the joint network will commence from the beginning of calendar 2018.
- Both Vodafone Portugal and NOS will maintain complete autonomy and flexibility in respect of their respective retail offers.
- Vodafone said the arrangement in Portugal is consistent with its fixed infrastructure strategy, which aims for an optimal mix of build, strategic partnerships, wholesale and buy approaches.