STB maker Netgem, French state-owned bank CDC and Oceinde have announced the creation of fibre ISP ‘Vitis’, which specialises in reselling broadband access to French consumers in areas covered by public-initiative networks (known as RIP, ‘Reseaux d'Initiative Publique’). Netgem holds a 55 percent stake in the ISP, with CDC and Oceinde controlling 33 and 12 percent respectively. The announcement states that CDC and Oceinde participated in a capital increase valuing Netgem’s investment at EUR 11.5 million and the overall company at EUR 21 million.
The ISP represents the evolution of Netgem’s Videofutur subsidiary, which had already launched fibre services on public-initiative networks. Vitis uses the brand name of ‘Fibre videofutur’ to market its offer, combining broadband, telephony and TV in a triple-play bundle priced EUR 39.90 per month. The package is advertised with a headline broadband speed of 1 Gbps and includes access to Videofutur’s VoD and reply services via a dedicated STB.
Mathias Hautefort has been named as president of Vitis, following his experience heading up Videofutur. The latter counts around 150,000 subscribers in Europe and has partnerships in place with a number of telecom operators, including Monaco Telecom, Post Luxembourg, Netplus in Switzerland and Oceinde’s Zeop subsidiary in the French overseas territory of Reunion.
The announcement of Vitis comes in the same week that the European Commission has given its endorsement to France’s national broadband strategy, ‘France THD’, following an assessment which found that the public funds required are in line with EU state aid rules. CDC, also known as Caisse des Depots, is playing an active part in this strategy and has already started financing the creation of public-initiative networks, which offer wholesale services to retail operators on an open-access basis.
