Friday, August 04, 2006

FTTH://Lijbrandt Telecom scores 62% penetration rate

Lijbrandt Telecom proves a very succesful privately owned FTTH company in the Netherlands. It was established by the Wessels family of construction company Volker Wessels Stevin, through their Reggeborgh Beheer investment vehicle. Direct ownership of Lijbrandt is at Reggefiber and CEO Martien Koster.

After having started in the town of Hillegom, Lisse recently approved their opening up the pavements/sidewalks. Larger plans emerged when Amino announced Lijbrandt's order for STBs. Now Planet Multimedia has an article, which includes a short interview with Koster.

In Hillegom, the network passes 90%, or 7400 homes, of which a good rate of 62% so far signed up. Lijbrandt was the only provider in the Netherlands to carry the Soccer 2006 World Championship fully in HD. The network is capable of 100 Mbps symmetrical and can be upgraded to 1 Gbps. Plans are to extend the network throughout the 'flower bulb' area and to pass 120k homes over a 3 year period (as reported before).

Interestingly, Koster says that KPN is interested in being a service provider on the network. When the interviewer suggests that 'KPN will of course buy Lijbrandt in due course', Koster cannot deny this possibility.