Vodafone, TPG ink $1B in transmission and wholesale deals

Those rumours will get even more legs, with the two companies announcing a services-for-subscriber swap that will implant TPG deep in the Vodafone network.

Two commercial agreements will mean a major expansion of TPG’s dark fibre transmission network and the migration of TPG’s mobile customer base to the Vodafone network.

TPG will be providing dark fibre, which is essentially unused optic fibre infrastructure that has been rolled out, and network services to Vodafone over a 15 year period.

Currently, TPG uses the Optus network for its wholesale mobile operations, but already TPG has removed Optus references on its site, replacing it with Vodafone.

Commenting on this agreement, Vodafone Australia CEO Inaki Berroeta said it would deliver lower latency, an exponential increase in capacity and enhanced resilience, adding: ‘Dark fibre is about preparing Vodafone for the future.

Vodafone will soon begin delivering new mobile services such as voice over LTE (VoLTE – a service Telstra begun switching on this month for its network) and the telco is also “looking to 5G and what is needed for that future”, Berroeta said. It is the next step in our network evolution and builds on our multi-billion dollar network investment in recent years to further enhance the customer experience. “What we are able to do with dark fibre is TPG will then provide the physical glass, we will ourselves, light up that fibre with our own equipment – that actually decouples the relationship of more data for more cost”.

“Network data traffic will continue to grow through customers’ appetite for mobile content and the emergence of technologies such as the Internet of Things, and a Dark Fibre network will allow us to cater for future growth”, Berroeta says. Dark fiber solves the challenges with backhaul and legacy infrastructure.

Its deployment plan is to complete the majority of the existing Vodafone network in 2018.

After Vocus and M2 Communications announced their merger deal, all eyes turned to troubled mobile operator Vodafone, with TPG mooted as the likely buyer.

TPG’s plans in the market over the last two years haven’t been as aggressive as the company would like them to be said the company’s COO, Craig Levy.