The new concern is expected to roll out fibre to 1 million homes and businesses by 2025.
Open Dutch Fiber is an independent platform that is majority owned by global investment firm KKR with DTCP as a minority investor. DTCP describes itself as a management platform focused on digital infrastructure.
The intention is to deploy FTTH to a minimum 1 million homes and businesses by 2025, across urban and higher population density areas.
T-Mobile Netherlands
Open Dutch Fiber has also signed up its first anchor tenant –T-Mobile Netherlands – which has signed a 20-year agreement. The operator has 6.8 million mobile customers and a fixed base of 682,000.
The platform is said to have an open architecture and will offer wholesale fibre services to all operators, beginning operations in Q2 2021.
The firm states it has a fully-funded commitment for expected capital expenditure of about €700 million and construction agreements are already in place.
Joint leadership
Open Dutch Fiber will be led by Jordi Nieuwenhuis and Uwe Nickl who most recently were co-CEOs of Deutsche Glasfaser in Germany.
Prior to his role at Deutsche Glasfaser, Nieuwenhuis co-founded Reggefiber in the Netherlands. They will be joined at Open Dutch Fiber by Michael Griffioen as CEO, who will oversee the company’s day-to-day operations.
Nieuwenhuis, co-founder of Open Dutch Fiber, said, “We are building a digital infrastructure platform with open access to all operators, to ensure an efficient and rapid deployment of capital resources, while avoiding uneconomical overbuild.”
Infrastructure investors
KKR established its Global Infrastructure strategy in 2008 and currently manages over $27 billion infrastructure assets with more than 40 investments including Deutsche Glasfaser in Germany, Hyperoptic in the UK and FiberCop in Italy.
DTCP Infra invests in European digital infrastructure across three verticals: towers, fiber, and data centres, including Swiss Towers and in Community Fiber.
In March, operator KPN and ABP, a pension fund, announced they would invest €1 billion over five years to speed up fibre access to more than a thousand villages. They expect to deploy more than 900,000 connections, which equates to 700,000 connections and 200,000 firms.
They two say this will mean the beneficiaries will have to wait a year less than they would have without the funding.