The Netherlands added 287,000 new homes passed with FTTH in 2019, taking the total to 3.20 million. The 10 percent growth in the number of homes passed takes the country to around 40 percent of households with access to fibre, according to the Telecompaper annual report FTTH in the Netherlands 2020. The market is expected to grow at an even faster pace in 2020.
The FTTH roll-out accelerated in 2019, with operators shifting their focus more to covering cities. After two years of little expansion, the roll-out started to pick-up in 2018 with more demand aggregation campaigns, and these started to lead to actual network builds in 2019. This also laid a base for further growth in the years to come as more operators plan expansion.
The two largest players on the market, KPN NetwerkNL and Delta Fiber Netwerk, are focusing their FTTH roll-out on cities. KPN has always focused on built-up areas and in the past year announced plans especially in larger cities. Delta Fiber Netwerk previously focused on rural areas but is now turning more to town centres and cities. The main challengers on the market, including E-Fiber and Primevest/T-Mobile, also have a number of areas planned for expansion.
The Dutch fibre market also started to show new signs of infrastructure competition in 2019, as multiple operators targeted the same areas. In several cases, KPN NetwerkNL announced plans to cover an area where work by a competitor was already underway, and other players also showed overlap.
The ACM conducted an investigation into the market competition and found the duplicating networks could threaten investment. It called for operators to work together more on the roll-out and for local authorities to try and limit the double networks. Two fibre networks in the same place are unlikely to be profitable, given they already compete with copper and cable as well. This creates uncertainty for investors and possible delays in construction.
The FTTH roll-out was suspended shortly in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but later construction resumed. Unforeseen circumstances such as the virus outbreak, as well as intense competition and limited construction capacity will impact the pace of FTTH builds in the coming period, and Telecompaper expects the operators may not achieve all their targets. Nevertheless, growth in homes passed is expected to accelerate to almost 600,000 in 2020, surpassing the previous annual record of 466,000 from 2013.
