OREANDA-NEWS.    Vodafone Group announces that Vodafone Portugal and Portugal Telecom have signed an agreement to deploy and share fibre networks reaching 900,000 homes in Portugal.
The agreement, which commences in December 2014 and runs for 25 years, will enable each company to offer high-speed data services to an additional 450,000 homes and businesses throughout Portugal.
The agreement complements Vodafone Portugal’s unified communication strategy and current fibre-to-the-home deployment programme, which aims to reach 1.5 million homes by mid-2015 and is ahead of schedule having already reached the 1 million mark.  The access provided by the Portugal Telecom agreement brings significant “time to market” benefits and will enable Vodafone Portugal to offer high-speed broadband, fixed telephony and television services to almost 2 million homes by the end of 2015.
Both Vodafone Portugal and Portugal Telecom will maintain complete autonomy and flexibility in designing their respective retail offers under the agreement.
Philipp Humm, Vodafone's CEO of Europe, said "this fibre sharing agreement is significant as it accelerates our fibre-to-the-home roll-out plans and enables us to bring converged products and services to almost half a million more homes and businesses across Portugal."
Vodafone Portugal has over 5.4 million mobile customers and around 240,000 fixed broadband customers, of whom approximately 190,000 are television customers.