CALGARY – Axia NetMedia Corporation has announced that its French company Covage has entered into an agreement to extend its Fibre-to-the-Office (FTTO) business to Grand Lyon, in the southeast of France.
The department of Grand Lyon has a population of 1.3 million, clustered around the country’s third largest city, Lyon. A new operating area for Covage, the company said that it plans to establish a new route on its fibre backbone that in turn will further cement its position as the leading independent, pure-play fibre operator in the French market.
Covage will own and operate the Grand Lyon network for an initial term of 25 years and offer a variety of dark and lit fibre services to retail service providers. Construction is scheduled to commence in Q1 2016 and last approximately 27 months with initial revenues expected in 2017. The network has a planned length of 862 km and makes extensive use of existing duct infrastructure, allowing for a rapid and cost effective build.
Axia chairman and CEO Art Price said that the France represents a major growth opportunity for the company.
“This growth will be driven by Covage increasing its penetration in existing markets and by winning new networks, such as Grand Lyon”, Price said in the news release. “Covage's addressable market continues to grow; the number of FTTO sites our networks pass or will pass now stands at 72,000, the number of homes our FTTH networks pass or will pass stands at 385,000. Penetration in the existing FTTO and FTTH addressable markets is 13% and 17% respectively. We see years of accelerating growth ahead for Covage as market share is gained, network construction is completed and new networks are added."
