KKR-Telefónica Colombian JV targets 2.3mn homes passed with fiber this year

On Net Fibra Colombia, the wholesale fiber company created by Telefónica and US fund KKR, projects reaching 2.3mn homes passed with fiber by the end of this year, up from 1.2mn when it kicked off in January, CEO Ximena Mora Méndez told BNamericas.

The company’s end-goal is to get to at least 4.3mn homes passed in 90 cities by 2024. The investment plan involves 850bn pesos (US$227mn).

The JV was announced last year and replicates the same model – and the same brand – adopted by KKR and Telefónica in their Chilean fiber JV, with the latter coming in as a partner and anchor-tenant of the new company to alleviate its capex with fiber deployments. 

At the same time, third-party service providers and telcos can lease the use of the infrastructure to provide fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) services to end-customers.

In the case of Colombia, KKR owns 60% of the JV and Telefónica 40%. The JV went operational in January after getting all the due regulatory nods, “inheriting” 1.2mn of homes that had already been passed by fiber by the Spanish telco.

According to Mora, the network is now at 1.4mn homes in 35 cities in Colombia, gaining traction particularly in Bogotá and Barranquilla. The total fiber network is now over 10,000km, including backbone, backhaul and optical metro rings.

“We started with around 40,000 households [homes-passed] in the first month, in the second month we ramped up to above 70,000, in the third month we were above 80,000, then we reached 95,000. The idea from this fourth month is to be above 110,000,” she said.

On Net Fibra Colombia projects hitting 2.3mn homes passed at year-end, surpassing its initially established goal of 2.1mn. Also, according to the CEO, first wholesale contracts with telcos are expected to be announced this quarter.

MARKET OVERVIEW

The third largest telecommunications market in Latin America, Colombia ended September with 8.25mn fixed internet subscriptions, up 560,000 in a year but almost flat sequentially, data from regulator CRC indicates.

Of the total, FTTH accounted for 21.3%, up from 16.7% in September 2020. That compares to fiber’s share of fixed connections of 62.7% (December data) in Brazil and 52.9% (September data) in Chile.

The Colombian fixed broadband market was led by Claro, with a 38.6% share in September, followed by Tigo-Une (20.8%), Telefónica's Movistar (14.2%) and Bogotá's ETB (8.5%).