Netomnia has secured an additional £25 million loan from the National Wealth Fund (NWF).
Fri, 29/07/2022 - 11:28
A new joint venture between InfraVia Capital Partners and Virgin Media O2’s parent companies Liberty Global and Telefónica, is investing £4.5bn to cover up to seven million homes not currently addressed by VMO2.
The Joint Venture will be 50% owned by Liberty Global and Telefónica, and 50% owned by InfraVia Capital Partners, combining the partners’ infrastructure and financing know-how with VMO2’s industrial scale.
VMO2 will act as the Anchor Wholesale Client in addition to Providing a Range of Technical Services. The JV will seek to attract additional third-party wholesale clients.
This network, alongside VMO2’s investments to upgrade its existing 16 million premises network, will create an FTTH footprint of up to 23 million premises.
The partnership will initially roll out fibre to five million homes both adjacent to the existing VMO2 footprint and in new areas, with the opportunity to expand to an additional two million homes.
Alongside the initial £4.5bn investment, the Joint Venture has obtained £3.3bn of fully underwritten debt financing from a consortium of financing banks.
Mike Fries (pictured), CEO and Vice Chairman, Liberty Global, said: “This landmark agreement will expand our FTTH footprint to millions of new UK homes, creating the second national fibre network in the UK. VMO2 will bring significant build expertise and will benefit from a meaningful off-net growth opportunity.”
José María Alvarez-Pallete, Chairman and CEO of Telefónica said: “Telefónica has a recent track record of developing broadband connectivity in markets through strategic partnerships.
“These deals help each country firmly increase their competitiveness and digital infrastructure to help their companies and economy thrive.”
Vincent Levita, CEO and Founder of InfraVia added: “Attracted by the long-term trends of ever-increasing data usage and increased need for home connectivity, this would represent our 5th investment in fibre network deployment in Europe through strategic partnerships.”
