Nokia has just won a network construction deal with a provider that has been building open fiber infrastructure in certain parts of Western Europe for about two decades.

The Finnish vendor signed a frame agreement with Eurofiber "to accelerate fiber optic rollout in Europe."

The agreement covers all Eurofiber affiliates in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands and includes optical transport and datacenter switching. Financial details were not disclosed.

Figure 1: Nokia will help open network provider Eurofibre expand its footprint in Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands.
(Source: Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash)

The overall objective is to expand Eurofiber’s open fiber network, which already stretches over 60,000 kilometers and is said to expand by 50 km per week on average.

Optical networks are already under deployment in the south and north of France. Furthermore, Nokia is deploying a DWDM city network in Germany for the Berlin-based joint venture Vattenfall-Eurofiber. In Belgium, the partners have agreed to renew the nationwide DWDM network. Here, the Eurofiber Cloud Infra unit selected SR Linux from Nokia as its switching platform.

Eric Kuisch, COO of the Eurofiber Group, noted that the provider has an "ambitious growth agenda in Western Europe" and cited a high-capacity DWDM network and secure data center equipment as the "main technological enablers to realize these ambitions."

Building blocks

Initially established in 2000 as FiberCorp, Eurofiber originally focused on developing fiber networks in Belgium and the Netherlands and has subsequently expanded its remit to France and Germany.

Built up over the years through a series of acquisitions in these markets, Eurofiber itself is now majority-owned by Antin Infrastructure Partners, which acquired the company from Doughty Hanson in May 2015.

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In 2021, the Eurofiber Group reported revenue of €217 million (US$217.43 million), which it said was up 15% from 2020.

It continued its acquisition spree in 2021, buying Lumos and Netiwan in France. It also agreed to become a joint shareholder in Next Generation Fiber Network (NGN), a German dark fiber provider owning a 19,000 km fiber optic network.

As mentioned above, Eurofiber already has a joint venture with Vattenfall Wärme in Germany, which aims to connect more than 500,000 households and businesses in Berlin in the coming years.

In Belgium, Eurofiber and Proximus established a joint venture called Unifiber in July 2021. Unifiber will provide at least 500,000 households and businesses with access to fiber connectivity in Wallonia.

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— Anne Morris, contributing editor, special to Light Reading