As of yet, the FTTB/H wholesale business has seen only limited development at TDG and its competitors. However, several recently concluded agreements suggest that the business is set to gain momentum, with positive effects for wholesale providers, access seekers and end customers.
Engaging in the wholesale business requires companies to establish the necessary technical, organisational and procedural preconditions. Given the lack of relevant wholesale experience and the large number of market players, initiating and managing many parallel direct wholesale relationships often proves challenging and complex in practice.
Aggregator platforms can help to overcome these challenges and reduce complexity. They offer the chance of managing wholesale relationships between (multiple) partners on both the supply and demand sides from a technical and operational perspective, without the need to establish new interfaces in each case. According to our estimations over 60% of wholesale connections processed on alternative FTTB/H networks are handled over aggregator platforms.
The growth of the wholesale business involving FTTB/H connections will be largely determined by the pace of further roll-out, the demand for fibre and access opportunities for third parties. The development of wholesale on alternative FTTB/H networks is hampered by network operators who strategically refuse to open up their infrastructures, by companies continuing to focus on HP roll-out strategies, and by the commitment contracts of TDG. Given its sales strength, TDG has so far also played only a very minor role as access seeker on alternative FTTB/H networks.
Depending on the further market development, we expect, based on our modelling an FTTB/H coverage (HP) between 72% and 85% and between 17.3 million and 20 million active FTTB/H connections in 2030. The number of expected wholesale-based FTTB/H connections will range between 3.9 and 5.9 million in 2030. We estimate that between 1.2 and 2 million connections will be accounted for by alternative operators.
