Digital City transfers three fiber optic networks to KPN

Digital City (Delta Rijssen Fiber Optic Investments) has transferred three fiber optic networks to KPN. This concerns the fiber optic network in the outskirts of Westerveld (Drenthe), Lingewaard and Berg en Dal (Gelderland).

The networks together comprise approximately 7,700 addresses. Everything remains the same for the connected consumers. The networks are open networks on which KPN and other providers provide services. Digital City and KPN do not disclose financial details.

Joost Steltenpool, director of KPN Network NL: “We are rapidly modernizing our existing copper networks by replacing them with fiber optics. As a result, we can provide our customers and those of our wholesale customers with fast internet and let the Netherlands lead the way digitally. We install fiber optics ourselves on a large scale and where possible we work together with other parties. This is also the case with Digital City. Adding the networks in Westerveld, Lingewaard and Berg en Dal to ours is a logical step in that collaboration.”

At present, KPN offers fiber optic to the meter cupboard in a third of Dutch households. From 2021, KPN will roll out approximately 500,000 new lines annually. In addition, KPN is actively looking for possible partnerships. In three years, more than half of the Netherlands will have fiber from KPN in the meter cupboard, by 2025 this will be approximately 65%. After that, KPN will continue to renew its network, so that in the long term more than 80% of the Netherlands will have access to a fast and future-proof internet connection via KPN's network.

KPN has traditionally opened its network to other providers - wholesale customers - to offer telecom services. KPN will continue to do so. It offers consumers and companies more freedom of choice and makes better use of the capacity of KPN's network.

Fiber offers the highest possible upload and download speed and is a more stable and reliable network that uses less energy. Together with KPN's completely renewed mobile network with 5G, this forms the most modern and powerful network on which the Netherlands can build well into the 21st century. Data growth will continue to increase enormously in the coming years, not only due to increasingly intensive use of the internet and an increasing number of devices, but also because of gaming, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and because of applications in healthcare and at school.