Telecom company Delta is competing with KPN and Ziggo. These are the two largest providers of fixed internet. The telecom provider, originally from Zeeland, is going to invest two billion euros to install fiber optics. The company hopes to provide two million households with internet via fiber by 2025.
If that succeeds, the company will have about a quarter of the fiber optic connections, writes the Financieele Dagblad. This makes it a serious challenger to KPN and Ziggo. Delta currently has about 900,000 customers. Ziggo has about 3.5 million internet connections, KPN about three million.
Delta mainly wants to focus on fiber optic connections in the smaller towns and cities across the country, says CEO Marco Visser. “We are making gigabit-plus speeds the new standard and we want to make that accessible to as many people as possible.”
KPN takeover attempt
Delta is able to invest the amount because it has received a loan from a number of banks that work together. ABN Amro, ING and a number of international banks, among others, entered into a consortium to provide 1.45 billion euros. That can be expanded by 600 million euros.
The owner of Delta, the Swedish investor EQT, tried to take over KPN last spring. The plan was to merge the networks of Delta and KPN. KPN declined that offer.