PPC FiberGrid: FTTH to 1.7 m households in 2025

A new era for telecommunications in Greece is being brought closer by PPC Group. PPC FiberGrid, the PPC subsidiary that has undertaken the development and provision of a nationwide fiber-to-the-home network, announces its construction plan until 2025, according to which fiber optic cables will reach 1.7 m households and businesses.

With PPC FiberGrid’s FTTH network having already reached 140,000 households in 12 municipalities of Attica, in just 10 months, the company awarded to 12 contractors, through a competitive process, the construction of Fiber to the Home networks in additional areas in Attica and in Thessaloniki, Patras, Heraklion, Volos, Kalamata, Larissa, Ioannina, Corinth, Trikala, Kozani, Veria, and Megalopolis. The areas have been selected based on, among other things, population coverage and FTTH penetration.

PPC FiberGrid’s goal is its FTTH network to reach 500,000 households and businesses by the end of 2024 and 1.7 million in 2025 in the above regions. Overall, PPC Group’s goal is to provide fiber-to-the-home coverage to 3 million households and businesses throughout the country within the next five years. Investments for the 2024-2026 period will amount to approximately €680 m.

It is worth noting that the architecture of the network constructed by PPC FiberGrid corresponds to one optic fiber cable per subscriber up to the point of concentration (cabin), ensuring the future expandability of the network and enabling the option of dark fiber service.

Wholesale commercial launch within 2024

PPC FiberGrid intends to make available through wholesale the new network in two ways. The first concerns the provision of a wholesale bitstream service with speeds up to 10 Gbps. The second is with the launch of a dark fiber service, with which each provider can choose the services it will provide through the cable to its end customer.

The vice-president of PPC FiberGrid and Deputy CEO of Digital and Advanced Services of PPC Group, Mr. Alexandros Paterakis, said: “Our vision is a digital society, accessible and open to all, which will contribute to and accelerate social and economic progress. We want to offer telecommunications providers a state-of-the-art and stable network of passive and active fiber optic access to households, companies, and public organizations. Through PPC FiberGrid’s network, we enable industry providers to offer high-quality services to their end customers and contribute to the country’s digital transition, in the Gigabit Society. Besides, the gigabit society is also a prerequisite for the green energy transition: smart energy homes and businesses need high connection speeds and near-real-time response so that electrical appliances, chargers, photovoltaics, storage units and management units of the smart energy home to cooperate with each other and with the grid“.