Supported an infrastructure fund on the technical and commercial due diligence of a wholesale FTTH rural deployment covering 2.2mn households in Germany
Our client, a leading infrastructure fund, was planning to invest in a wholesale FTTH provider, led by an international fixed and mobile operator. The operator wanted to create a FibreCo to execute a greenfield deployment of ~2.2 million households in rural areas of Germany.
Solution
On our technical assessment, we reviewed the planned network architecture, deployment plan and construction plans for the FTTH access network, passive and active network dimensioning and ODFs. We also reviewed the construction processes, selected civil works providers, vendors and deployment strategy, and managing the national, regional, and local permits.
We assessed the network costs (capex and opex) during and after the FTTH deployment, including different scenarios depending on the roll-out technique mix (mini-trenching, horizontal drilling, compression drilling etc.). Furthermore, we reviewed all operations (management team, staffing, etc.), IT systems, and implementation plans of pre-selected OSS/BSS, NOC, etc.
On the commercial assessment, we analysed the German fixed broadband market dynamics, FTTH/UBB competition and planned deployments by competitors in FibreCo’s targeted regions. We developed a comprehensive analysis of the commercial, marketing, and technical strategies, which then informed projections for network take-up, pricing, passive and active (bitstream) products, wholesale and retail ARPU, churn, and potential tenants.
Result
Our commercial and technical due diligence enabled our client to bid a fair price for the project and to consolidate a joint venture with the operator for the deployment of the 2.2 million households in rural areas of Germany.
