Vodafone on Wednesday completed the 100 per cent acquisition of Spanish cable operator Ono for €7.2 billion ($9.7 billion) in a move that bolsters the operator's strategy to offer bundles of fixed and mobile services within national markets.
The UK-based operator also finally revealed what impact this acquisition will have on the previous agreement between Vodafone Spain and Orange Spain to co-invest in fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) across the country.
When the agreement was signed last year, it covered the potential to reach 6 million households and workplaces across 50 cities by September 2017. Now, the agreement will be limited to 3 million homes and businesses by 2015.
According to Vodafone, the companies will collectively build FTTH to 2 million premises across Spain. As the joint deployment has already reached 800,000 premises across 12 Spanish cities, this means that the companies will jointly deploy fibre to an additional 1.2 million premises in areas where the Ono high-speed fibre network is not present by September 2015.
Vodafone will also provide Orange with wholesale access to 1 million homes using the Ono network, and noted that this commercial agreement will take the overall number of premises jointly accessed to the total of 3 million.
Philipp Humm, Vodafone's CEO of Europe, said: "Our partnership with Orange Spain complements our acquisition of Ono, ensuring a highly efficient deployment of high-speed broadband and bringing more competition to the Spanish market."
Vodafone won unconditional approval from European Union regulators to buy Ono earlier in July. The company has also recently agreed to boost fibre coverage in Portugal through an agreement with Portugal Telecom.
In Germany, it has already started to market joint DSL and cable plans following its acquisition of Kabel Deutschland.
For more:
- see this Vodafone release on Ono
- see this Vodafone release on the Orange FTTH agreement
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