KPN Group Belgium (NYSE: KPN) on Thursday struck a wholesale arrangement with Belgacom to offer VDSL2-based broadband services to its customers.
Under the terms of the five-year wholesale agreement, Belgacom will provide VDSL2 services to KPN Group Belgium, a move that will enable KPN to bring higher speed DSL services to its growing wireline customer base in Belgium.
Although the VDSL2 connections will likely be used to deliver higher-speed broadband data services, it's not clear whether KPN will also offer IPTV services over these new connections.
All that the two service providers said in a press release announcing the agreement was that they would provide more details on the commercial launch "later."
Belgacom is required to let competitors like KPN Belgium purchase TV services, but are in the midst of challenging that requirement in a Belgian court.
Although KPN has a foothold in Belgium's wireless market via Base, it sold its enterprise and wholesale unit to Mobistar in 2010. In addition to Belgacom, KPN Belgium faces the challenge of squaring off against other competitive carriers such as Mobistar and Telenet, all of which currently offer a mobile and wireline service bundle.
Belgacom itself has been an early advocate of VDSL2, announcing an agreement last September to leverage Alcatel-Lucent's (NYSE: ALU) VDSL2 vectoring platforms to deliver services to its own customers beginning in 2014. The telco's adoption of VDSL2 vectoring builds on its "Broadway" broadband strategy that's set on maximizing the use of its existing fiber network infrastructure.
For more:
- see the release
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