Altice Europe announced that its fibre to the home business unit SFR FTTH along with its consortium of financial investors, has entered into a definitive agreement with Cube Infrastructure Fund and Partners Group to acquire Covage

Europe: Altice, a convergent leader in telecom, content, media, entertainment and advertising, announced signing of a definite agreement by its fibre to the home business unit SFR FTTH with Cube Infrastructure Fund and Partners Group, to acquire Covage, the 4th largest fibre wholesale operator in France. The buyout is expected to close by 2020. The acquisition will be financed with 70 million euros worth of non-recourse debt, 465 million euros of cash equity to be contributed by Altice and 465 million euros of cash equity to be contributed by SFR FTTH's financial investors. This deal will be resulting in Altice's SFR FTTH unit and Covage deploying fibre networks over the next few years, as France sets up new 5G telecoms networks. With this acquisition, SFR FTTH will continue to execute its strategy to meaningfully expand its footprint.

Founder of Altice stated that, “I am very pleased that the company is further expanding the leading FTTH wholesaler in Europe. I am extremely proud to integrate Covage, a great company, with a portfolio of areas in France complementary to theirs. With this transaction they also bring onboard excellent local relationships. They continue to be focused on deleveraging Altice Europe notably thanks to growing revenues and EBITDA, which will be supplemented with disposal proceeds.”

According to TechSci Research, with this acquisition SFR FTTH and Covage will emerge out as the largest FTTH wholesalers in Europe and this will further strengthen the competitive position of SFR FTTH. The companies together will massively deploy fibre over the next 3 to 4 years. This will predominantly be built in exclusive areas, where no fibre infrastructure has been built to date.

With connectivity to more than 2.4 million homes, Covage is the 4th largest wholesale fibre operator in France. These 2.4 million connected homes will be added to SFR FTTH’s existing footprint of more than 5.4 million homes. Overall, this will strengthen Altice’s position in the French market given the growing importance of convergence.

According to the report published by TechSci Research, “Global Multimode Fiber Market By Product (Step Index Fiber & Gradient Index), By Application (Defence; IT & Telecom; Government; MSO (Triple Play), Healthcare & Others), By Material (Glass & Plastic), By Region, Competition, Forecast & Opportunities, 2024”, the global multimode fiber market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of around 6% on account of growing high reliability and capacity offered by the multimode. Multimode fibers are gaining popularity as different signals can be transmitted through the same fiber due to difference in reflection angle.

According to another TechSci Research report, “India Fiber Optic Components Market By Type (Fiber Optic Cables, Fiber Optic Splitters, Fiber Optic Transceivers, Fiber Optic Amplifiers, Fiber Optic Circulators, Fiber Optic Connectors & Others), By Data Rate (10G, 40G, 100G and Above 100G), By Application (Distributed Sensing, Analytical and Medical Equipment, Lighting, Communications & Others), By Region, Competition, Forecast & Opportunities, 2025”, the India fiber optic components market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10% during the forecast period owing to increasing demand for data centres due to data localization policy and rising popularity of cloud computing services. Thus, there is a rising need for fiber optic components such as Fiber Optic Cables, Fiber Optic Splitters, Fiber Optic Transceivers, Fiber Optic Amplifiers, Fiber Optic Circulators, Fiber Optic Connectors, etc., to lay down the optic fiber infrastructure. An increasing number of government initiatives such as BharatNet and Smart Cities initiatives are anticipated to positively influence India fiber optic components market during forecast period.