Building on their existing strategic partnership the two enterprises will leverage their open digital infrastructure, to create a shared quantum-secured fiber corridor that enables banks, trading platforms and market infrastructure providers to protect critical data against emerging quantum threats while maintaining low-latency, high-performance connectivity. This initiative complements the carriers’ focus on quantum-safe networking and recent investments in quantum-secure infrastructure, and marks an important step towards future-proof, pan-European secure communications for the financial sector.

From left to right Mirko Voltolini, VP Technology & Innovation at Colt Technology, Phaedra Kortekaas, Managing Director Eurofiber Netherlands, Frank Miller, Chief AI and Platforms Officer Colt Technology Services and Peter Coppens, VP Product at Colt Technology Services

Phaedra Kortekaas, Managing Director Eurofiber, said: “At Eurofiber, we strongly believe that the future of secure connectivity depends on deep, strategic collaboration. Our partnership with Colt is a clear example of how combining expertise and vision leads to the kind of future‑proof solutions the market urgently needs. Together, we are shaping a resilient, quantum‑secure infrastructure that empowers our customers to lead the way in shaping tomorrow’s digital future.”

Peter Coppens, VP - Infrastructure & Connectivity Solutions, Colt Technology Services, said: “I think that Colt and Eurofiber are united by a singular vision. The extension of our partnership is rooted in a shared belief that the future of connectivity must be both uncompromisingly secure and exceptionally high performing. Eurofiber’s open digital infrastructure and forward‑looking approach to innovation provide the ideal foundation for our joint mission to accelerate quantum‑safe networking. By combining Colt’s strengths in ultra‑low‑latency, carrier‑grade services with Eurofiber’s dense and resilient fibre network, we are paving the way for rapid adoption of Quantum Key Distribution and next‑generation quantum‑resilient security. Together, we will enable the financial sector to move confidently into the quantum era, delivering secure, resilient connectivity designed not only for today’s demands, but for the challenges of tomorrow.”

Quantum Key Distribution offers a new form of encryption security
QKD uses a data encryption key based on quantum technology that is resistant to attempted interception. QKD helps protect valuable data from possible future attacks using quantum computers, playing a vital role in securing critical infrastructure, for example in the financial area.  This technology allows scalable and cost-effective quantum encrypted fiber connections, enabling the many businesses between Brussels, Amsterdam and London to be connected via breach-proof connections.

About Colt Technology Services
We’re Colt. We own and operate exceptional digital infrastructure which powers the global AI economy, connects societies, builds communities and transforms lives. 6,000 colleagues in 80+ offices across Europe, Asia, and North America share a deep commitment to delivering an outstanding experience and making every interaction effortless for our customers.

Customers and partners choose our award-winning fibre infrastructure, digital platforms and security solutions, delivered across a network that spans continents and crosses oceans. We’re Europe’s largest B2B operator: we connect 40+ countries, 32,000 enterprise buildings, 275+ points of presence, and 12 cable landing stations and we manage eight subsea cable systems. We also co-manage AS3356 - the most widely peered network in the world. Founded in London over 30 years ago, we’re privately funded and driven by values of fairness, inclusion and equity. We’re known for our urgent call for social and sustainable change, and we're guided by our purpose in everything we do: creating effortless connections and extraordinary outcomes for our customers, communities and people.

Be a part of our story: come on over to www.colt.net  or join our amazing communities at LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. Media enquiry? Email us at pressqueries@colt.net. 

5G RedCap: a logical extension to a mature ecosystem
Together with Nokia and the other strategic partners, Eurofiber is building a Private 5G ecosystem based on secure, scalable and sector-specific 5G solutions on top of Eurofiber’s fiber infrastructure. 5G RedCap fits seamlessly into this strategy. The technology is designed for large-scale IoT applications that require reliability and low latency, but not the full 5G bandwidth. It offers lower complexity than full 5G modems, reduced energy consumption, affordable modules, and support for large numbers of IoT devices such as sensors, wearables and cameras.

Growing demand in industry, logistics, healthcare and construction
In virtually all sectors, demand for scalable IoT connectivity is increasing — a trend Eurofiber sees clearly in the market. By making 5G RedCap available within the private network, a crucial missing link in modern IoT connectivity is filled. No Dutch operator has commercially rolled out 5G RedCap yet, making this private 5G ecosystem once again a frontrunner.

Secure, scalable and economically attractive
5G RedCap makes it possible to start IoT projects easily and scale them up step by step without major upfront investments. This aligns with the existing private 5G service model and creates opportunities in industry, healthcare, logistics and construction. With 5G RedCap, integrating OT equipment and IT networks also becomes easier. The technology enables real-time data collection with reliable coverage and low latency in dynamic environments. Thanks to the implementation of 5G RedCap, IoT devices can now be directly connected to Eurofiber’s secure, open fiber backbone — a major advantage compared to WiFi, BLE or LPWAN technologies.

Phaedra Kortekaas, Managing Director Eurofiber Netherlands “With the introduction of 5G RedCap within our Private 5G ecosystem, we are giving our customers a powerful new building block for their digital transformation. More and more organizations want to modernize their operations with IoT applications, while seeking maximum reliability and security. Thanks to our unique collaboration, we now make this innovation widely accessible, directly connected to our fiber backbone. With all the data captured via IoT, AI models can function even better. This is a breakthrough to capture the full potential of AI for companies working in a data-driven way.”

Prakash Sadagopan, Head of Mission Critical Enterprise, Global Sales and Customer Operations, Nokia “Reliable networks are the foundation of digital transformation for today’s enterprises. With 5G RedCap, we are advancing connectivity by enabling scalable, energy-efficient IoT deployments within Eurofiber’s Private 5G ecosystem. Together, we empower mission-critical enterprises with secure, high-performance wireless solutions that support real-time operations and future growth.”

Founded in 2012, LuxNetwork has established itself as a trusted provider of business-critical connectivity services. From its base in Luxembourg, the company delivers high-capacity international fiber connections linking Luxembourg to major European cities including Frankfurt, Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam, as well as local Internet and Ethernet services. Following the acquisition, LuxNetwork and its team will be fully integrated into Eurofiber’s Belgium organization. 

Over the years, LuxNetwork has continuously invested in a robust and modern fiber infrastructure. Its international backbone is powered by a recently deployed 400G ready DWDM network. This technology enables the transport of very large data volumes over fiber optics, ensuring fast, secure and highly reliable connectivity for data-intensive and mission-critical applications. 

^{left: Hans Witdouck, CEO Eurofiber Belgium, right: Luc Lutot, CEO LuxNetwork}

By acquiring LuxNetwork, Eurofiber further densifies its open access digital infrastructure and strengthens cross-border interconnections. As Hans Witdouck, CEO of Eurofiber Belgium, explains: “LuxNetwork’s high-capacity DWDM network significantly strengthens our international footprint. With this, we broaden our openaccess connectivity footprint, benefiting key customer groups such as financial institutions, media, tech, and hyperscalers. It enables us to deliver highly reliable and secure connectivity to organizations across Europe, while continuing to invest locally in Luxembourg. Local customers will continue to benefit from dedicated support from the Luxembourg office.” 

For LuxNetwork, joining Eurofiber builds on the company’s strengths while preserving what has made its success. “Becoming part of Eurofiber represents a natural next step in LuxNetwork’s development over recent years, enabling us to expand our expertise, meet growing demand for high-capacity connectivity, and become one of Europe's major players” says Luc Lutot, CEO and founder of LuxNetwork. “It also recognizes the work done by our team over the years. Their expertise, commitment and proximity to customers are at the heart of our success and will remain unchanged as we move forward together.” 

About LuxNetwork 
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Bettembourg, LuxNetwork is a Luxembourg-based B2B connectivity provider specializing in Internet, Ethernet and international high-capacity fiber services. The company operates a resilient network connecting Luxembourg to major European digital hubs and serves customers in sectors with demanding connectivity requirements. 

Partner organizations who facilitated SBTi’s growth and development are CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, the We Mean Business Coalition, the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). In its role as a corporate climate action organization, the SBTi helps companies worldwide set science-based emissions reduction targets in line with what is needed to keep global heating below catastrophic levels.

A roadmap to net-zero
Eurofiber  commits to reaching net-zero emissions across its value chain by 2040. By 2030, it will cut scope 1 and 2 emissions by at least 90% from its 2021 baseline, ensure 100% renewable electricity sourcing, and reduce scope 3 emissions by 30%. From 2030 to 2040, it will maintain a minimum 90% reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions and further reduce scope 3 emissions by 90%, fully aligning with its net-zero target.

Eurofiber has already significantly reduced its carbon footprint for scope 1 & 2 (direct emissions and electricity purchases) in recent years; this now amounts to only approximately 3% of our entire CO2 footprint. In order to also achieve our objectives in our supply chain (scope 3), we have established a supplier engagement program to inspire, enthuse and advise Eurofiber’s suppliers on improving sustainability of their products and organization. This will result in a further reduction of CO₂ emissions in our supply chain in the coming years, moving towards net-zero in 2040.

Sustainability at the core of business strategy
Eurofiber has a leading role in society in the field of digital infrastructure. We believe that this entails a broader responsibility, and are firmly committed to pursuing sustainable growth for our own organization, for our employees and for society as a whole. Our ESG policy encompasses sustainable production at our suppliers, an inclusive work environment for our employees, and climate change mitigation, including innovations serving the energy transition and the digital transition. In May 2024, Eurofiber was ranked in the top 1% of best-performing companies globally by EcoVadis, acknowledging the company’s strong ESG program.

Not only is Eurofiber moving towards an increasingly international focus in its business activities, but Eurofiber's ESG team is also taking on a leading role internationally. Together with NLconnect, the Dutch IT-sector organization, Eurofiber has joined a consortium of 18 parties working on preparing Product Category Rules (PCR) for active and passive equipment in fiber optic networks. Worldwide, companies can now use these PRCs to prepare Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) for their products.

Jeroen Kanselaar, ESG manager at Eurofiber, chairs the Sustainability Committee of the FTTH Council. This committee recently launched the FTTH Eco Platform, which supports companies in the sector in calculating their CO₂ footprint at an organizational level. Uniquely, the Eco Platform also offers outcomes of carbon emission impacts for the entire European sector. Kanselaar is also co-lead of the Green Digital Action program of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), bringing together partners worldwide to advance climate action through digital innovation.

Eurofiber’s strategy for achieving these Net-Zero Targets is in line with the FTTH Council ambitions to create a digital and sustainable Europe with full fiber.  Similarly, it is aligned with the ITU calls to action at COP28 as well as the ITU Declaration on Green Digital Action at COP29.

To learn more about Eurofiber’s sustainability initiatives and ESG commitments, check out our latest ESG report here.

More information about SBTi please find here

Andrew Edison is a leader with over 30 years of experience in executive roles in the Telecom and ICT markets. He started his international career at AT&T, where he held operational and commercial positions in Paris, New Jersey, and latterly in London where he was Region Vice President, EMEA Region. In 2015 he joined Level 3 Communications as Senior Vice President of EMEA Sales. In 2018, Andrew moved  to Colt Technology Services as Vice President Strategic Alliances, then as Vice President Global Enterprise & Capital Markets. His most recent role at Colt was Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, a position he held for 2.5 years. Andrew joins Eurofiber from Global Internet provider Expereo, where he was Senior Vice President Global Wholesale.

At Eurofiber, Andrew Edison will report to CCO Andrea Kraus. His focus and responsibilities will be in the field of designing and steering commercial strategies for the different markets and for the Eurofiber Group as a whole. 

Arcadiz, established in 1999, is a leading business critical connectivity provider with vast experience in designing, building, maintaining and operating networks for the most advanced customer network requirements in Benelux. Arcadiz provides high-end tailored connectivity services to large customers across profit and non-profit segments, including large enterprises, governments and utilities. Based in Leuven, Arcadiz has 38 employees. Completion of the acquisition of Arcadiz is subject to customary regulatory approvals in Belgium and is expected to conclude in Q1 2025.

About Arcadiz
Arcadiz is a leading business critical connectivity provider with more than 25 years of experience in designing, building, maintaining and operating networks for complex business connectivity needs in Benelux. The networks are delivered turnkey and are built with the most advanced optical, packet and IP technologies meeting customers’ ever-growing demand for confidentiality, integrity and availability of their data. Arcadiz combines consultancy and network integration with its own business critical connectivity. To this purpose, Arcadiz operates a DWDM and an MPLS-IP backbone with A-brand hardware connecting major datacenters in the Benelux and FLAPD cities (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin) for its customers valuing low-latency, deterministic, secure, and uncontended connectivity with 99,9995% availability. Arcadiz has its headquarters in Leuven and operates in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

A steady increase in cyber threats and evolving global regulatory requirements are driving a spike in demand for quantum-safe encryption. Eurofiber is therefore partnering with Juniper Networks and Quantum Bridge to integrate advanced post-quantum cryptography into its extensive network infrastructure. This partnership positions the companies at the forefront of the emerging quantum technology market, securing these networks from cyberattacks using a quantum computer by combining Juniper Networks’ SRX firewalls with Quantum Bridge’s DSKE technology.

Quantum Bridge's patented DSKE technology does not rely on traditional asymmetric cryptography, a part of today’s encryption which is both widely used and vulnerable to quantum cyberattacks. DSKE is an unbreakable security solution which seamlessly integrates with existing firewalls and infrastructure, enabling Eurofiber to provide scalable, future-proof security for its clients. By combining cutting-edge key distribution technology with Eurofiber’s reliable connectivity, sensitive customer data is automatically protected against potential attacks using a quantum computer.

Partnering with Juniper and Quantum Bridge strengthens our commitment to secure and reliable connectivity. The partnership leverages our position as a leader in the fiberoptic market and ensures our customers are protected against evolving cyber threats, including those posed by quantum computing. Over the past few years, we have collaborated with partners to test various advanced technologies, including Post Quantum Cryptography, QKD and DSKE” said Eric Kuisch, COO at Eurofiber.

DSKE technology
Distributed symmetric key establishment (DSKE) is an advanced and highly scalable key distribution technology trusted by large financial institutions, enterprise clients, and service providers that require a multi-layer, defense-in-depth security strategy. It fully automates the creation and distribution of symmetric keys, without relying on computational complexity or asymmetric encryption. DSKE is the industry’s first scalable symmetric key distribution technology, combining the scalability of public key infrastructure (PKI), the security of quantum key distribution (QKD) and the simplicity of pre-shared keys.

Quantum-safe financial systems
Recently, Eurofiber successfully showcased the DSKE technology in a high-security environment. 
At a recent meeting of central banks in Rome, representatives from G7 countries discussed the cryptographic risks associated with the advancement of quantum computing. On that occasion, Eurofiber demonstrated how the Quantum Bridge DSKE technology combined with Juniper Networks SRX firewalls can play a leading role in securing the financial system from attacks by malicious actors using quantum computers. The demonstration was attended by global leaders in central banking and commercial banking who agreed that now is the time to plan an orderly migration of the financial system towards quantum-safe encryption.

“Our collaboration with Eurofiber and Juniper Networks represents a significant step forward in delivering quantum-safe communication solutions to a rapidly expanding pool of customers. By integrating our DSKE technology into Eurofiber’s infrastructure and Juniper’s SRX firewalls, we’re not just addressing current security needs but also preparing for the challenges of tomorrow’s digital landscape,” said Mattia Montagna, CEO of Quantum Bridge. 

“Quantum computers capable of breaking today’s asymmetric encryption may be as little as 5 years away according to some experts. It is therefore vital to act now to protect sensitive data and networks. This is why, together with Eurofiber and Quantum Bridge, we have developed a simple and easy-to-implement system which works with existing network infrastructure, making it easy for government corporations and other key stakeholders to protect their systems.” said Melchior Aelmans, Chief Architect & Quantum Lead at Juniper Network

About Juniper
Juniper Networks believes that connectivity is not the same as experiencing a great connection. Juniper's AI-Native Networking Platform is built from the ground up to leverage AI to deliver the best and most secure user experiences from the edge to the data center and cloud. Additional information can be found at or connect with Juniper on www.juniper.net, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

About Quantum Bridge
Quantum Bridge was founded by Dr. Mattia Montagna and Professor Hoi-Kwong Lo, leveraging expertise developed at the University of Toronto. The company offers a suite of unbreakable, trustless quantum-safe communication solutions for discerning customers who absolutely cannot afford a breach. QB is also actively researching cutting-edge engineering and theoretical problems related to achieving long-distance quantum communication, and is developing multiple proprietary technologies to make current internet and cellular networks quantum-resilient. For additional information on these or other data security innovations from Quantum Bridge, please visit the company’s website at quantumbridge.io.

More information about this topic, please find the Juniper blog here
More information about Eurofiber Quantum Safe networking including a white paper, please find here

IOEMA Cable system

IOEMA bridges core European markets with the Nordics where Bulk Fibre Networks is acting as a 
landing party in Norway, facilitating the connectivity to the N01 Data Centre, North of 
Kristiansand, and further towards Oslo.

IOEMA has selected Arelion as the provider of the infrastructure on the shores of Denmark and 
space in the ex-TAT-14 cable landing station, as well as further connectivity towards Esbjerg and 
Copenhagen, via their extensive network.

EWE TEL GmbH and Relined Fiber Network are joint landing partners in Germany, where the 
IOEMA cable system will terminate at a business park close to Wilhelmshaven, the new energy 
and transportation hub in the North of Germany. Both companies will provide backhaul routes to 
Hamburg, Berlin and beyond. 

Eurofiber together with QTS are the landing parties in Eemshaven, The Netherlands, reusing the 
existing infrastructure of the former TGN Northern Europe cable, terminating in the DC01 of QTS 
in Eemshaven. Eurofiber will provide backhaul connectivity to Groningen, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, 
etc. via their fiber network.

Colt Technology Services will accommodate the IOEMA Fibre System at their landing point in 
Dumpton Gap (i.e. Tangerine & PEC) and in their CLS Broadstairs. Backhaul towards all important 
data centre and Telehouse locations in Greater London are being connected seamlessly. 

“By increasing capacity, performance, and resilience across Northern Europe, the IOEMA project 
will have a profound impact on digital connectivity for this region and beyond. We’re excited and 
honoured to be playing a key role in bringing this ambitious vision to reality,” said Annette Murphy, 
Chief Commercial Officer, Colt Technology Services. 

“We are excited to partner with QTS and IOEMA Fiber Ltd. in this valuable project, which meets 
the growing need for backhaul capacity, and underlines the key position of Eemshaven as junction 
between the Nordics and Western Europe.” – Rhoderick van der Wyck, Managing Director 
International Business at Eurofiber.

“QTS is pleased to play a role in the IOEMA project, underscoring our support of strengthening 
connectivity across Europe. Our data centers are a critical part of the region’s infrastructure, and 
this project will bolster the capabilities of our services while reinforcing our ability to meet growing 
demand. We appreciate the partnership and work of all who are contributing to the success of 
this undertaking.” – Kees Loer, Vice President, Facilities Operations – Property Engineering 
(Europe) at QTS Data Centers.

“We’re proud to have been selected as landing party and connectivity provider for the IOEMA 
project. As the world’s number one ranked Internet backbone, we look forward to support 
increased network capacity and diversity through the project, regionally and internationally.” – 
Mattias Fridström, VP & Chief Evangelist, Arelion.

“Being a landing partner for this key project aligns well with our vision of enabling strategically 
diversified, sustainable connectivity into the Nordics. Bulk has a strong track-record of complex 
fiber projects, and we look forward to supporting the IOEMA Project meeting the demand for more 
critical, diverse infrastructure,” - Merete Caubet, VP Bulk Fiber Networks.

“After 5 years of development and observing the market in Northern Europe, it became evident 
that diverse routes are needed to provide the redundancy for the increasing data demand in the 
Nordics. We are proud to start this project together with our landing partners and provide further 
connectivity across Europe and beyond.” - Eckhard Bruckschen, CTO of IOEMA Fibre Ltd.

About IOEMA Fibre Ltd. 
The project company, IOEMA Fibre Ltd., was, after 4 years of project development, founded in 
2023. IOEMA is a state-of-the-art, high-capacity, 1400 km repeatered submarine fibre optic 
project that will arc across five key northern European markets – the UK, Netherlands, Germany, 
Denmark and Norway. The multicore 48-fibre pair system will support a minimum overall capacity 
of 1.3 Pb/s. 
www.ioemafibre.eu

As a leading provider of connectivity solutions, Eurofiber will be acquiring the shares held by Vattenfall Wärme Berlin AG in their joint venture, Vattenfall Eurofiber. From the earliest days of the joint venture back in 2021, it had been agreed that Eurofiber would eventually acquire the majority of shares. The company aims to provide fiberoptic access to at least 500,000 households and businesses. To achieve this goal, Vattenfall allowed use of its tunnel system in Berlin, covering over 700km, while Eurofiber contributed its expertise as a digital infrastructure provider to the joint venture.

Founded in 2000, Eurofiber has extensive experience in building and operating large-scale fiberoptic networks in urban centers in the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Germany.

Despite the shift in ownership structure, Eurofiber and Vattenfall will continue to work together moving forward. The company retains the right to use Vattenfall’s tunnel infrastructure for fiberoptic expansion. At this point, around 75,000 households already have the opportunity to switch to the fiberoptic infrastructure offered by Eurofiber, thanks to open access through one of the partner providers.

The acquisition does not involve any changes for business customers or end users of Vattenfall Eurofiber.

This is the translation of the original news item on the Vattenfall Eurofiber website

The challenge of SBTi is to limit global warming to 1.5°C and prevent the worst effects of climate change. With the aim to mobilizes the private sector to take the lead on urgent climate action. The SBTi is a partnership between CDP, United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

‘’We’re proud to receive this internationally recognized approval by SBTi. This further encourages us to take the right steps in our sustainability ambitions for Thought Leadership in the ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) field’’, says Jeroen Kanselaar, Manager ESG of Eurofiber.

Official approved science-based targets commits Eurofiber to reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 90% by 2030 and our scope 3 emissions by 30% from a 2021 base year. Eurofiber commits to increase active annual sourcing of renewable electricity from 95% in 2021 to 100% by 2025 and to continue active annual sourcing of 100%.

Last year Eurofiber completed a Euro 1.5 billion sustainability-linked refinancing supporting further network expansion across Europe. The facilities and the related hedging have sustainability incentives in alignment with Eurofiber’s sustainability program, which includes, among other things, measures that will lead to a 50% CO2 reduction by 2025 (compared to 2021), furthering the company’s stated goal to be 100% climate proof by 2030, as well as measures regarding gender balance. For this facility Eurofiber received the GlobalCapital's Sustainability Linked Loan of the Year Award, one of the leading information sources of the international capital markets. 

Eurofiber ESG ambitions & 2022 ESG report 

Colt’s Hybrid On Net empowers businesses to experience the advantages of a dedicated fiber optic connection without the burdensome expenses and complexities associated with constructing their network infrastructure. This innovative solution enables Colt to expand its fiber network, operating the passive dark fiber of carefully chosen metro suppliers. As a result, enterprises can access dependable, high-performance, and secure network services across various locations through the dense Eurofiber network, further enhancing Colt's offerings to its customers.

The new partnership formalizes and expands the relationship between the two companies, which began in 2010. It underlines their ongoing mutual commitment to offering businesses superior digital connectivity, enabling them to seamlessly connect economic and commercial hubs throughout Europe.

“We are delighted to partner with Eurofiber,  a leading provider of digital infrastructure with very strong local presence in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Germany," said Keri Gilder, CEO of Colt Technology Services. "This partnership aligns with our ongoing commitment to enabling digital transformation and transforming the way the world works through the power of connectivity. Our partnership with Eurofiber in France significantly boosts our ability to deliver exceptional connections through our intelligent Colt IQ Network, providing enterprises with the best network services for the best customer outcomes."

Alex Goldblum, CEO of Eurofiber, said: “We are excited to partner with Colt, demonstrating our unwavering commitment to driving the digital society, filled with boundless opportunities. Eurofiber is driven by an ambitious growth agenda in Western Europe, and we are enthusiastic about the prospects this collaboration presents for our valued customers. By combining Colt's global network with Eurofiber's expertise and local presence, we can offer enterprises comprehensive and dynamic digital infrastructure solutions. Our partnership strengthens both companies' abilities to support customers with the agility and flexibility they need to thrive in today's digital economy.”

As the world's bandwidth demands continue to surge, and with a growing number of enterprises depending on cloud-hosted infrastructure, organisations are progressively seeking diverse connectivity solutions to guarantee dependable and secure access to their data and applications.

Colt and Eurofiber's collaboration accelerates their shared ambition to lead in enabling digital transformation. By delivering customised connectivity solutions that meet the evolving demands of today's and tomorrow's enterprises, this partnership marks a major step forward in delivering the network of the future. This partnership promises to benefit customers, employees, stakeholders, and society as a whole. Customers will gain access to unparalleled opportunities for expanding their digital presence and accomplishing a wide range of objectives.

About Colt Technology Services
Colt Technology Services (Colt) is a global digital infrastructure company which creates extraordinary connections to help businesses succeed. Powered by amazing people and like-minded partners, Colt  is driven by its purpose: to put the power of the digital universe in the hands of its customers, wherever, whenever and however they choose.  Since 1992, Colt has set itself apart through its deep commitment to its customers, growing from its heritage in the City of London to more than 60 offices around the world. The powerful Colt IQ Network connects 222 cities and 32 countries with more than 1000 data centres, 51 Metropolitan Area Networks and over 31,000 buildings across Europe, Asia and North America’s largest business hubs. Privately owned, Colt is one of the most financially sound companies in the sector. Obsessed with delivering industry-leading customer experience, Colt is guided by its dedication to customer innovation, by its values and its responsibility to its customers, partners, people and planet.

For more information, please visit www.colt.net

The Eurofiber cycling team took part again this year, pedalling hard to collect a fantastic 11,195 euros with their efforts. This year’s event raised over 1 million euros for this charitable cause: individual cancer research. In contrast to last year’s cold and rainy weather, this eleventh edition had nothing but sunshine. The view during the climb was breath-taking, enjoyed by participants and volunteers alike. The Stelvio For Life organization had arranged every detail to perfection; once the mayor of Bormio had announced the total amount, it was party time on the village square at Piazza Cavour. It was unforgettable. Special thanks to everyone for the support and donations! We look forward to seeing you again next year.

Over Stelvio For Life
This foundation believes in a treatment for cancer patients based on the DNA profile of their tumour. To make this all happen, and to be able to give patients a longer and better life,  Stelvio For Life raise money for individualised cancer research. 
That, together with the passion for sports, results in the annually returning charity sports event: Stelvio for Life.

More information

Elisabeth Hankeln (1975,  Vienna, Austria) is an experienced international business leader. At Philips Consumer Electronics, Philips Television and Philips Lighting, she held various senior management positions in the fields of strategy, marketing, product development and business transformation. After her time at Philips, Elisabeth joined Cordstrap, a global leader in cargo protection. As VP Product and Marketing and Member of the Global Executive Team, she led the commercial transformation for Cordstrap. Later, as VP Germany, she successfully guided the company in expanding its position in this highly competitive biggest market.

As Managing Director, Elisabeth Hankeln will be responsible for Eurofiber’s activities in the field of cloud infrastructure. Eurofiber Cloud Infra was established in 2021 as part of the Eurofiber Group in response to market needs for integrated IT infrastructure services. It offers a fully owned open cloud and network infrastructure, including its own energy-efficient Tier 3 data centers, a VMware Verified Private Cloud platform, a software-defined network between more than 90 datacenters in the Netherlands and Belgium offering direct links to Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and others.  Andrea Kraus, Chief Revenue Officer, says: “Eurofiber Cloud Infra has a strong portfolio of cloud and cloud connectivity solutions. For the coming years we foresee accelerating growth, and with Elisabeth we found a leader with a proven record of managing such growth, both commercially and in terms of people and organizational development. We are very excited to welcome Elisabeth into the Eurofiber team.”

Elisabeth Hankeln: “Digitization is key for forward-looking business in all business areas and the cloud infra market is a very dynamic one. Within its Cloud Infra business unit, and backed by the Eurofiber Group, Eurofiber has the expertise and market knowledge to expand and become even more successful in this segment, supporting its customers in realizing their full potential through easy access to a complete, reliable and open digital infrastructure. I am delighted to join this highly experienced team and to contribute to the further development of the Cloud Infra business, our customers and colleagues.”

Foto Hans Barten

Eurofiber received the award for the EUR 1.5 billion debt facilities, which were placed in June 2022. The facilities and the related hedging have sustainability incentives in alignment with Eurofiber’s sustainability program, which includes, among other things, measures that will lead to a 50% CO2 reduction by 2025, furthering the company’s stated goal to be 100% climate proof by 2030, as well as measures regarding gender balance.

GlobalCapital is one of the leading information sources of the international capital markets. Their reporting includes deal analysis, people moves, industry trends and more.

"We are very pleased and proud of this award. It is a recognition from the market of our right strategic direction in which we integrate our sustainability program with the rapid fiber roll-out in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany," said CFO Edze Tollenaar.

Appliwave is a Paris-based B2B infrastructure telecom operator that provides enterprises and wholesale customers with FTTO connectivity. Founded in 2010, it was acquired in 2019 by Septeo, a company specialized in IT solutions for legal and real estate professionals. In recent years, Appliwave had deployed its own fiberoptic networks in Paris, Lyon, Annecy and Reims, with a total length of over 2,600 kilometers. Its backbone network covers the whole of France and extends to Germany.

Avelia, headquartered in Nice, was founded in 2003 and was acquired by Septeo in early 2022. It has a large customer base of enterprises and wholesale partners in Paris and Nice. Avelia provides them with network security, telecoms and internet services.

Appliwave and Avelia will become part of Eurofiber France. With this acquisition, the Eurofiber Group is expanding its footprint in France, further executing its growth strategy. Earlier acquisitions were Lille-based Eurafibre, Eura DC and ATE (2019), Lumos (Nantes, 2020), FullSave (Toulouse and Bordeaux regions, 2020) and Netiwan (Montpellier region, 2021).

Pierre Cassier, CEO of Eurofiber France: “We are excited to welcome Appliwave and Avelia within the group. They extend our French footprint with a dense network in Paris and strong momentum in Lyon, combining network assets, market knowledge and commercial achievements. Together with the existing management and staff, who already have done an excellent job building these companies, we will provide best-in-class services to a wider group of customers and accelerate growth.”

Johannes Pichler [1983] has been active as an entrepreneur and Managing Director within the German ICT and datacenter industry for more than 18 years. In 2004, Mr Pichler co-founded Globalways, which he developed together with his team from a local internet service provider to a leading city carrier and datacenter operator in the Stuttgart region. Until recently, he held the position as Managing Director of Globalways.

Johannes Pichler succeeds Christoph Klein, who until recently combined his position as CEO of NGN Fiber Network with his role as Managing Director within the Eurofiber Group. Mr Klein will now focus on the latter again, in which he is responsible for developing and executing the Group’s expansion in Germany.

About NGN Fiber Network
NGN Fiber Network GmbH & Co.KG is a leading German provider of dark fiber connectivity since more than 20 years. With a constantly growing fiber infrastructure of over 19,000 km, NGN reaches all major cities, metropolitan areas or internet hubs that are important for telecommunication. The company offers a national backbone ring for Germany, international connections in neighbouring countries and, as a partner of Eurofiber, also cross-border-connections to The Netherlands, France and Belgium.

The digital transformation of our society demands reliable, safe and secure fiberoptic networks and cloud infrastructure solutions. As a provider of open digital infrastructure since 2000, Eurofiber owns and operates industry-leading fiberoptic networks and cloud infrastructure solutions. Underpinned by a strong appetite among banks to contribute to Eurofiber’s continuing story of success, the refinancing will be used to invest in the rollout of fiberoptic networks internationally and future acquisitions. The ESG linkage of the loan and swaps further demonstrates Eurofiber, PGGM and Antin’s collective commitment to sustainability.

“This landmark refinancing testifies to a continued strong belief in the strategy of Eurofiber and its rapid fiber roll out in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. The refinancing allows us to continue pursuing our growth journey” said Edze Tollenaar, CFO of Eurofiber.

“It is great to see Eurofiber combining its growth plans in the fiber market with reaching its sustainability performance targets. We are very proud we have been able to support Eurofiber as debt advisor with this refinancing, another milestone in the company’s continued development" said Blaise van der Zwaal, Managing Director within ING’s technology, media and telecoms (TMT) sector coverage team.

About Eurofiber

Eurofiber has been a provider of industry-leading open digital infrastructure since 2000. Utilizing our own fiberoptic network and datacenters, we provide smart, open, future-proof cloud infrastructure and connectivity solutions to companies, government bodies and non-profit organizations. Customers have complete freedom to choose the services, applications and providers they need, allowing them to tap into the full potential of digital innovation. Eurofiber has a 61,700 km fiberoptic network in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. This network is expanded by 50 km per week on average. Eurofiber companies Dataplace, FullSave and Eura DC operate eleven datacenters in the Netherlands and France. Supplementing that vital infrastructure, we also offer interconnectivity between nearly all carrier-neutral datacenters in The Netherlands and Belgium through the DCspine platform. Eurofiber is laying the foundation under the digital society, which is why the Dutch government has assigned Eurofiber the status of ‘vital infrastructure’.

Eurofiber is supported by its shareholders Antin Infrastructure Partners, a leading private equity firm focused on infrastructure investments, and the PGGM Infrastructure Fund, an open-ended core infrastructure fund with investments in OECD countries. More information is available at www.eurofiber.com.

The Eurofiber Group consists of: Eurofiber, Eurofiber Cloud Infra (including DCspine, MatrixMind and Dataplace (The Netherlands)), FullSave, Lumos, Netiwan, Eurafibre, ATE and Eura DC (France). Eurofiber participates in joint ventures Vattenfall Eurofiber (Germany) and Unifiber (with Proximus, Belgium) and has an investment partnership with German NGN Fiber Network.

About ING

ING is a global financial institution with a strong European base, offering banking services through its operating company ING Bank. The purpose of ING Bank is empowering people to stay a step ahead in life and in business. ING Bank’s more than 57,000 employees offer retail and wholesale banking services to customers in over 40 countries.

ING Group shares are listed on the exchanges of Amsterdam (INGA NA, INGA.AS), Brussels and on the New York Stock Exchange (ADRs: ING US, ING.N).

Sustainability forms an integral part of ING’s strategy, evidenced by ING’s leading position in sector benchmarks. ING's ESG rating by MSCI was affirmed 'AA' in December 2021. ING Group shares are included in major sustainability and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) index products of leading providers STOXX, Morningstar and FTSE Russell. In January 2021, ING received an ESG evaluation score of 83 ('strong') from S&P Global Ratings.

More information is available at www.ing.com

Similarly, Eurofiber and Proximus completed the incorporation of their joint venture Unifiber in July 2021. Unifiber will provide at least 500,000 households and businesses with access to fiber connectivity in Wallonia.

Eurofiber also created a new business unit Eurofiber Cloud Infra, combining its subsidiaries Dataplace and DCspine under one umbrella. In April 2022, MatrixMind was also fully incorporated into this new business unit.

As of January 1^st, 2022 Andrea Kraus was appointed Chief Revenue Officer and member of the executive board for the Eurofiber Group.

Outlook for 2022

In 2022, Eurofiber will continue to grow its business in Western Europe, both organically and inorganically and will continue to focus on industry leading customer satisfaction.

Maarssen, the Netherlands, 31 March 2022 -  With effect from 1 April, cloud platform provider MatrixMind will be fully incorporated into the Eurofiber organization, where it will be a part of Eurofiber Cloud Infra, the recently established business unit of the Eurofiber Group. MatrixMind already joined the Eurofiber Group in October 2020.

With the incorporation of MatrixMind, Eurofiber Cloud Infra becomes the second pillar in addition to the connectivity proposition and will provide industry leading open cloud infrastructure services to companies, governments and non-profit organizations. Its portfolio is built on four pillars: Dataplace colocation services in 6 Tier III carrier neutral datacenters in the Netherlands; DCspine, a software defined interconnectivity platform connecting more than 80 datacenters in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany; a state of the art IaaS offering and the MatrixMind hybrid cloud platform CloudHub, and cloud consulting services.

MatrixMind, a Utrecht-based company that developed the CloudHub as their flagship service, joining the Eurofiber Group in October 2020 was the beginning of an increasingly close partnership. A year and a half later, this leads to the full integration of MatrixMind into Eurofiber Cloud Infra. Therefore the management team of Eurofiber Cloud Infra will be expanded  with MatrixMind's Lucas den Os, Almir Iriskic and Jaap Gorjup.

Daniel Danon, Managing Director of Eurofiber Cloud Infra: 'We are delighted that MatrixMind is now a full member of Eurofiber Cloud Infra. The integration of our propositions and consulting expertise will greatly strengthen our market position and make us the ideal discussion partner for all our customers when it comes to the design and implementation of their digital infrastructure.’

Lucas den Os, Managing Director of MatrixMind: 'MatrixMind has landed well in the Eurofiber group, the interaction with the other units within the group has been excellent and together we offer a more than state-of-the-art cloud infra services package. The step to full integration with Eurofiber Cloud Infra is therefore a logical one. A wonderful new phase for MatrixMind and Eurofiber.’

Andrea Kraus, Chief Revenue Officer: 'With Dataplace, DCspine and MatrixMind, Eurofiber Cloud Infra offers our customers a unique combination of services in the fields of co-location, cloud, connectivity and consultancy. We can offer these separately or in combination, thus appealing to a broad category in the market. This means that we now have two more than full-fledged pillars within the Eurofiber group: connectivity and cloud infra services.'

About Eurofiber Cloud Infra
Eurofiber Cloud Infra was established as part of the Eurofiber Group in 2021, to address the market needs for integrated cloud infra services. Customers benefit from our assets, capabilities and in-depth expertise in consulting, implementation and management of open hybrid cloud infrastructure. Eurofiber Cloud Infra is growing fast, and  already has a customer base of more than 750 companies, governmental and non-profit organizations.

https://www.eurofibercloudinfra.com/en 

Moniek Thissen (41) joined Eurofiber as Program Manager Innovation in 2018. Earlier, she held several program-management and leadership positions in the energy industry. As Group Director Products & Solutions, Ms Thissen will be responsible for the further development of Eurofiber’s portfolio as part of the commercial strategy of the Eurofiber Group. She will report to Chief Revenue Officer Andrea Kraus.

MatrixMind is a Dutch company specialized in hybrid and multi-cloud solutions. Back in 2015, it achieved Azure Gold status, making it an early adopter of Azure specialization. In December 2021 MatrixMind obtained the exceptional recognition of Advanced Specialist in Azure Networking Services. Only Gold partners with in-depth knowledge of networking and who meet a large number of strict requirements for setting up an Azure Cloud environment are eligible for this recognition.

Fully implementing a cloud environment
“We are very proud of this specialization”, says Almir Iriskic, founder and CTO of MatrixMind. "It shows that Azure holds no secrets for us and that we have a well thought out strategy to fully implement Azure Cloud. Advanced networking knowledge is one of the key success factors of cloud adoption. The test by means of an audit was particularly robust. It did not only include networking as a specialization, but also the well thought-out design of Azure Cloud. We passed it with flying colors. With this, we have proven that we have a well-considered approach to create a good and secure link between the customer's IT environments and Azure Cloud."

Partly thanks to this specialization, customers can count on MatrixMind to have sufficient knowledge and experience in designing and setting up Azure landing zones. "Landing zones are crucial to have things like connectivity, identity, security, governance and management in order and to continuously optimize the environment further", says Almir Iriskic.

Keep on innovating
MatrixMind has been part of the Eurofiber Group since 2020. Eurofiber COO Eric Kuisch: “With MatrixMind we offer clients so-called hybrid cloud solutions, in which they themselves can determine whether and at what pace they want to move to the private or public cloud, for example, and also have the option of going back part way or switching providers if necessary. This recognition from Microsoft shows that we are at the top of the market. Meanwhile, we continue to innovate in order to deliver even more added value to our customers”.

About MatrixMind
MatrixMind, part of the Eurofiber group, helps clients who wish to make the transition to the cloud with cloud consultancy, managed services and support. MatrixMind also has its own hybrid platform (CloudHub), with which organizations can make a controlled switch to the cloud. The company serves customers as GVB, Asics, municipality Molenlanden, Hoogesteger, municipality Hollands Kroon and several others.

Electrifying its fleet of 200 lease cars in the Netherlands and Belgium is part of the vast sustainability program which was started in 2020. Procurement Director Norian Wasch: ‘This program consists of a range of measures that need to count up to 50% of CO2 reduction by 2025 and the company being 100% climate proof by 2030.’ Energy saving and the use and recycling of environmental-friendly are among the other components of this program. Wasch: ‘We started various promising initiatives in the area of reducing our footprint by teaming up with our suppliers and partners, who are embracing the initiative and actively helping us finding solutions'.

Director People and Organization Yvonne van Rees - Vellinga says: ‘Alongside genuine enthusiasm of our suppliers, we see a pull from the labor market as well. Sustainability is one of the recurring topics applicants bring on the table in job interviews and our ESG (environmental, social, government)-policies help us in attracting scarce talents. In this way, building a sustainable, future-proof way of doing business, already pays off when recruiting in today’s labor market'. 

NGN Fiber Network (‘NGN’) is a German dark fiber provider owning and operating a unique and extensive nationwide long-haul and metropolitan fiber network across 52 cities including Munich, Leipzig, Halle, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Erfurt and Berlin. In June 2021, the company announced a long-term partnership with Eurofiber, a provider of industry-leading open digital infrastructure in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. Together, NGN and Eurofiber are accelerating the expansion of NGN’s already extensive network in order to address increasing demand for fiber infrastructure with a nationwide network to be accessible to all German telecom operators, other network operators, multi-national corporations and enterprises in an open and non-discriminatory manner.

With the appointments of Robert Jelinek-Nacke as Chief Financial Officer and Helge Weiss as Chief Commercial Officer, NGN further strengthens its senior management, thus laying the foundation for future growth. 

CEO Christoph Klein: ‘I am very excited to welcome Robert and Helge in our team. Both bring a lot of IT and telecom experience to the table, which is crucial now that we are expanding rapidly.’

Robert Jelinek-Nacke
Robert Jelinek-Nacke (1966) has held multiple financial senior management positions in the international telecommunications industry for more than 20 years. Roberts most recent positions has been 2021 (acting) CFO- Member of the Board at Bitfield, a start-up specialized in bitcoin mining and from 2016 to 2020, Robert was CFO-Member of the Board of T-Mobile Netherlands (at that period TMNL was a JV of Deutsche Telekom and Tele2 Sweden AB). In earlier years, Robert worked for Telekom Austria and Hrvatski Telekom (Croatia) and joined T-Mobile Austria in 2001. After that, he held various senior management positions at T-Mobile International and Deutsche Telekom headquarter. Robert Jelinek-Nacke has been appointed as CFO-Member of the Board of NGN as of 1 January 2022.

Helge Weiss
Helge Weiss (1977) has been working as a sales, marketing and product management professional in the ICT industry since 1998. He held senior positions at Telefonica Germany for B2B and B2C and was a Senior Advisor at Roland Berger. In 2017, Helge became Vice President B2B Sales at Unitymedia (a Vodafone company). His most recent roles have been Senior Vice President eHealth Connectivity at CompuGroup Medical and Senior Advisor for telecoms and digitization in the ICT industry. Helge Weiss has been appointed CCO of NGN as of 1 February 2022.

About NGN
NGN is a leading dark fiber provider in Germany that operates and owns a highly strategic fiber network, covering a substantial portion of Germany. NGN serves MNOs, carriers, DCs and FttH operators with dark fiber turn-key solutions as well as FttH/FttC roll-out projects. As a result of its partnership with Eurofiber, NGN’s fiber-optic network expanded another 40,000 km to The Netherlands, Belgium and France.

The TMT Growth Story Award celebrates those companies or organizations which have undergone tremendous transformation or exceptional growth over the past 12 months - either organically or via acquisitions and partnerships. The judging panel takes into account metrics which include: revenue and profit growth, market share and/or disruption, M&A and financing activity, innovation, or growth of senior management team.

Eurofiber, a provider of industry-leading open digital infrastructure, founded in 2000, has evolved rapidly in the last few years. In 2019, the Dutch-Belgian fiber-optic and cloud infrastructure specialist expanded to France, by acquiring three companies in Lille: Eurafibre, ATE and Eura DC. In 2020, it enlarged its French footprint by acquiring FullSave in Toulouse and Lumos in Nantes. This year, Netiwan, based in the South of France, was added to the group.

In 2020, Eurofiber founded a joint venture with Vattenfall Berlin to provide 500,000 households and businesses with fiber-optic connectivity.

In 2021, a partnership with NGN Fiber Network was established, launching a top-3 altnet provider in Germany. In the same year Eurofiber established, together with Belgian telecom operator Proximus, a joint venture named Unifiber, which started to deploy a fiber-optic network for over 500,000 households and businesses in the Wallonia regions.

Simultaneously, Eurofiber expanded its cloud infrastructure and hosting solutions by building and acquiring datacenters (from 6 to 11 recently) and by taking a majority stake in Dutch cloud platform provider MatrixMind.

With its M&A activities, combined with strong organic growth, the Eurofiber Group doubled in size in the last three years, to a professional workforce of 650.

Quote Alex Goldblum, CEO
"I’m honoured to receive this award. It is an acknowledgement of the excellent work by all the staff at Eurofiber, as well as our partners. We are determined to continue doing what we are good at: providing as many customers as possible with industry-leading open access digital infrastructure."

About TMT Finance
TMT Finance was first launched in the UK in 2009 to connect and inform senior executives pursuing M&A, investment, financing and advisory opportunities in the telecom, media and tech sector globally. Since then, TMT Finance has established 5 weekly news titles with a series of leading annual executive only events gathering financial-decision makers in the US, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Frankfurt am Main, 24 November 2021 - NGN Fiber Network – Eurofiber Germany and DB broadband are launching a future of cooperation in access to their fiber-optic networks. To that end, the two providers have signed a framework agreement intended to offer carriers, ISPs, media and content providers, public utilities, local governments, businesses and public authorities access to an open, non-discriminatory network of over 76,000 km of fiber-optic infrastructure throughout Europe – a truly gigantic network that is set to have a dramatic impact on the digitalization of Germany and the rest of Europe.

Both networks share a unique approach in terms of network routes, mapped along transport lines of all kinds, but the two companies have something else in common: they both support handovers at any point of their fiber-optic networks. This feature is by no means a given in the fiber-optic world, and will accelerate the flexible and efficient rollout of fiber in Germany.

DB broadband is responsible for marketing unutilized capacity on Deutsche Bahn’s fiber-optic network. This network is routed along German railway lines, which allows it to reach even very remote, underserved regions. The network currently covers over 20,000 kilometers, and by 2027 it will be extended to cover DB’s entire network of railway lines (33,400 km).

NGN Fiber Network is a leading German dark fiber provider operating a unique, extensive and nationwide network of 17,000 km of long-distance and metropolitan fiber. It has city networks in Munich, Leipzig, Halle, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Erfurt, Berlin and others, and 160+ datacenters directly connected to the NGN network. NGN Fiber Network has just entered into a close partnership with the Eurofiber Group to expand its infrastructure even further.

Eurofiber is a leading European fiber infrastructure operator providing telecom operators, businesses, governmental institutions and non-profit organizations open access to its smart, future-proof network infrastructure, with more than 39,000 km of fiber in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany.

Left to right: Dr. Christian Humpert – CEO DB broadband; Marco Weigand – CEO NGN; Dr. Christoph Klein – CEO Eurofiber; Gunnar Wegener – Manager Region South DB broadband

Andrea Kraus (1973) has 20 years of experience in the international telecom and IT industry. Her career started at Deutsche Telekom, after which she held international leading sales positions at T-Systems and IBM, among others. Most recently, Kraus worked for Vodafone Germany, where she was director of Business Sales. As chief revenue officer (CRO) at Eurofiber, Kraus will be responsible for commercial policy at the Eurofiber Group. Alex Goldblum, Eurofiber CEO: ‘With Andrea’s arrival, we welcome a board member who has a very solid track record in the world of telecom, broadband and cloud infrastructure, in Germany and in many other countries in Europe. Her in-depth knowledge and experience in our current markets makes her the ideal person to develop our European growth ambitions. We are delighted that Andrea will be joining our team.’ Andrea Kraus: ‘Fiber and cloud infra are the foundations of the digital economy and society. Eurofiber has the ambition and quality to play a leading role in Europe in this respect. I am proud to have the chance to contribute to the continued growth of this enterprise.’

Jeanine van der Vlist (1964) has decided to leave Eurofiber after almost seven years in order to enter the next phase of her career. Van der Vlist joined Eurofiber Netherlands in 2015 and joined the executive board for Eurofiber Group in the capacity of chief commercial officer in 2019. In 2017, the readers of the Dutch trade magazine Computable elected her as CEO of the Year. Alex Goldblum: ‘Eurofiber has made huge strides under Jeanine’s leadership, in growth, market share and in customer satisfaction. We are very grateful to Jeanine for her role in these achievements, and wish her all the best in the next phase of her career.’

As of January 1, 2022, the Eurofiber executive board will consist of Alex Goldblum (CEO), Eric Kuisch (COO), Edze Tollenaar (CFO) and Andrea Kraus (CRO).

  






Andrea Kraus                                                                     Jeanine van der Vlist

Pierre Cassier (48) is an experienced executive, who has been working in the international ICT and telecoms industry for his entire career. Most recently, he was CEO of Expandium, provider of network monitoring solutions, and CEO of Vedicis, a French company specialized in Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) solutions, which was acquired by Expandium in 2019. Earlier, Mr Cassier held executive roles at, among others, FPS Towers, Sogetrel and Ericsson. In the newly established role of MD Eurofiber France, Pierre Cassier will be a key member of the Executive Committee of the Eurofiber Group. In this role he will be responsible for developing and executing the Group’s expansion strategy, both organic and by M&A, in France.

Growth strategy

In 2019, Eurofiber entered the French market by acquiring the Lille-based companies ATE, Eura DC and Eurafibre. Recently, Lumos (Nantes), FullSave (Toulouse, Bordeaux) and Netiwan (Béziers, Montpellier, Nîmes) were added to the Eurofiber Group. Pierre Cassier: ‘I am delighted to join the Eurofiber team to participate in the growth of the group in France. The various acquisitions already made constitute a solid base to accelerate our growth in France and become a national player in FFTO. We will also benefit from the strength of the Eurofiber group to expand our network nationwide with a very high level of service quality for our customers.’

Alex Goldblum, CEO Eurofiber: ‘We are excited that Pierre will join our team. Entrepreneur in the soul, he will contribute to the development of Eurofiber in France. His vast experience in senior commercial as well as operational roles in high profile telecom infra structure companies, his vision and expertise on the French market are of great value for us to take the next steps in implementing our growth strategy.’

Vattenfall Eurofiber is making Berlin fit for the digital future. The goal is to connect more than 500,000 households and businesses to the high-performance fiber-optic network by the end of 2026, which will be available to all Internet providers on a non-discriminatory basis via open access. Modern optical fibers are faster, more secure and more energy-efficient than existing coaxial or copper cables - and meet all the requirements of a modern digital infrastructure in the long term.

Vattenfall Eurofiber is using state-of-the-art technology to lay the fiber largely over existing district heating duct capacity - resulting in significantly less civil engineering work. The joint venture uses the existing infrastructure to keep burdens as low as possible.

The network will also be a digital infrastructure for 5G and IoT connectivity, paving the way for the capital's rapid development into a smart city.

from left to right:

Jan Timmermann, Vice President Strategy & Business Development von Vattenfall Wärme Berlin AG, Marco Sick, CEO von Vattenfall Eurofiber, Alf Aleithe, Geschäftsführer der berlinovo. Eric Kuisch, COO von Eurofiber

Marco Sick, CEO of Vattenfall Eurofiber: "We define it as our mission to connect to the future, and we do so with every fiber in our being. This promise we make to Berlin and the people in the city also describes what we do and the idea behind our work: We utilize our infrastructure and experience to lay a fiber-optic network in Berlin. We generate our added value by marketing our network on a non-discriminatory basis. In this way, we create an infrastructure for the future of a smart Berlin that is open to all. That is our message: 'Mit jeder Faser Berlin', Berlin with its every fiber.”

Jan Timmermann, Vice President Strategy & Business Development von Vattenfall Wärme Berlin AG: "At Vattenfall Wärme, we aim to offer our customers who purchase heating an environmentally friendly, low-CO2 and at the same time secure heat supply. However, beyond our core business, we also want to offer Berliners more, such as access to a high-performance fiber optic network. We are delighted to have found the perfect partner for the joint venture in Eurofiber. By using existing municipal infrastructure, we can lay fiber more quickly and minimize the impact of additional construction measures on the citizens of Berlin. But in order for us to push ahead with the rollout of a high-performance fiber-optic network in the area, we also need simplified and digitized approval processes."

Eric Kuisch, COO of Eurofiber: "Digital connectivity is vital for business and society. The high-quality open fiber network we will realize with Vattenfall will help thousands of businesses and organizations and hundreds of thousands of households in Berlin to prepare for the future. We are proud to bring our expertise as an enabler of the smart society to this great project and look forward to working together. We are very proud of the joint Vattenfall Eurofiber project in Berlin."

Alf Aleithe, Managing Director of berlinovo: "Fast and stable Internet is essential for all tenants to participate in work, study, school, and so on. These days, it determines the attractiveness of a property for tenants. With the fiber optic connection, berlinovo is making its properties fit for the digital future."

About Vattenfall Eurofiber
Vattenfall Eurofiber GmbH is the joint venture for the expansion of a high-performance fiber optic network in Berlin. More than 500,000 homes and businesses will have access to FTTB/ FTTH fiber connections by the end of 2026. The new fiber-optic network offers a faster and superior connection compared with existing infrastructures and is available to all Internet providers on a non-discriminatory basis via open access.

About Vattenfall Heat
As the largest heating company in the Swedish Vattenfall Group, Vattenfall Wärme aims to enable Berlin to achieve a fossil-free energy supply within a generation. To this end, the company is driving forward the heat transition in the German capital together with the State of Berlin and local partners. In doing so, Vattenfall Wärme Berlin is relying on individual supply concepts in the neighborhoods, smartly controlled heating systems and 100 percent local generation with a growing share of renewable energies.

About Eurofiber
Eurofiber has been developing, maintaining and expanding its industry-leading, open access digital infrastructure for 20 years. With its fiber optic network and datacenters, Eurofiber is able to provide enterprises, organizations and governments in The Netherlands, Belgium and France with smart, open, future-proof cloud and connectivity solutions. Customers have complete freedom to choose the services, applications and providers they need. Eurofiber’s strategy is aimed at further expanding within Europe and broadening its portfolio. Urban Fiber-to-the-Home (FttH) deployments are a central feature of this expansion strategy, with Eurofiber expecting to execute further FttH projects with a wholesale and open access approach.

Vattenfall Eurofiber

Tara Farsad, tara.farsad@vattenfall-eurofiber.com

Senior Marketing Manager & Kommunikation

M +49 172 302 77 82

www.vattenfall-eurofiber.de

Vattenfall

Sandra Kühberger, sandra.kuehberger@vattenfall.de

Media Relations & Editorial Germany

+49 30 8182 (2323)

www.vattenfall.de/newsroom

Eurofiber

Armand Rouw, armand.rouw@eurofiber.com

Head of Corporate Communications Eurofiber

+316 34851722

‘As a leading provider of digital infrastructure, Eurofiber’s strategy is built upon two pillars: fiberoptic connectivity and cloud infrastructure’, says Daniel Danon. ‘Especially for the latter, the market is changing rapidly. Market needs are rapidly transforming from classic colocation and connectivity to hybrid cloud solutions, adding virtual platforms for optimal flexibility and scalability. At Eurofiber we are ideally equipped to meet these market needs, as we continue to expand our service portfolio and our reach across the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. To serve our extending customer base in the best way possible, we bring our subsidiaries Dataplace and DCspine under one Cloud Infrastructure umbrella. With this, we are able to bring our customers and partners a complete set of cloud infra components to enable their digital enterprise. This includes DCspine's automated network across its extensive DC to DC presence (78 datacenters across the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany) and Dataplace's six state of the art Tier III datacenters covering the full co-location and digital infrastructure portfolio. The cloud infra division opens to partners the entire cloud connectivity and infrastructure portfolio of the Eurofiber Group.’

Jan Michiel Berkel adds: ‘Soon, both DCspine and Dataplace will integrate Eurofiber subsidiary MatrixMind's CloudHub platform into their solutions. This enables customers to manage their (hybrid) cloud environment quickly, simply and securely from a large number of locations in the Netherlands and Belgium. Now that we have formed a cloud infra business unit, we further extend our capacity to provide our customers with open infrastructure services that allow them to support securely and reliably their own digital strategy.’

Whilst integrated as an organization, Eurofiber, Dataplace and DCspine will maintain the ability to operate independently in the market. Daniel Danon: ‘With the Cloud Infra division, we are ready to offer integrated services when needed. Needless to say, the business units will also continue to provide their customers with co-location, interconnectivity or cloud connectivity services only if preferred. The independent position of both Dataplace and DCspine also means that, as before, no distinction will be made for internal or external customers in terms of pricing or other conditions. We remain a truly open digital infrastructure partner.’

Management Cloud Infrastructure business unit Eurofiber:

(left) Daniel Danon, Managing Director. Danon (43) joined Eurofiber in March 2020 as Group Director Products & Solutions. Earlier, Daniel held various senior management roles in both Liberty Global and Vodafone Hungary.

(right) Jan Michiel Berkel (37) was an M&A advisor at Deloitte, after which he joined Eurofiber as a senior manager in 2014. In 2018, Berkel founded datacenter interconnectivity provider DCspine, which he led ever since.

FullSave, part of Eurofiber Group, announced the acquisition of Netiwan. These two major regional players joining forces paves the way for the creation of an operator spanning the entire South of France.

Founded in 2010, Netiwan has a history and a path similar to those of FullSave: a local player close to its customers, active in the digital connectivity sector and more recently also providing cloud infrastructure services. Netiwan is present in Béziers, Montpellier and Nîmes, where it operates its own datacenter. Joining forces with FullSave will create a major operator in the Occitanie region and beyond, offering services along the Bordeaux-Toulouse-Montpellier-Marseille corridor.

Eurofiber French growth strategy
Netiwan is the latest acquisition by the Eurofiber Group in France. In 2020, Eurofiber acquired both Lumos and FullSave as part of its French growth strategy, which is aimed at expanding Eurofiber’s footprint in France to at least 25 cities by 2025. Eurofiber also has a strong presence in Lille with its companies Eurafibre, ATE and Eura DC.

About Eurofiber
Eurofiber is a fast-growing provider of industry-leading open digital infrastructure in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. Utilizing our 39,700 km fiberoptic network and ten datacenters, we empower the digital societies of the countries in which we operate. We are proud to have gained the trust of companies, government bodies and non-profit organizations. We provide them with connectivity and cloud infrastructure solutions tailored to their needs. Our open infrastructure ensures them complete freedom to choose services, applications and providers. For more information, please visit eurofiber.com.

Kim Borcheld (38) joined Eurofiber in January as Finance Director Eurofiber Netherlands. Earlier, she held senior financial positions at KPN, Telfort and XS4ALL. Kim Borcheld succeeds Pascal Peer, who will leave the company after 12 years. Eurofiber CFO Edze Tollenaar: ‘We thank Pascal for his vast contributions to the successes and growth of Eurofiber and wish him all the best in his next role. We welcome Kim Borcheld in her new capacity as a group director. As Finance Director of Eurofiber Netherlands, Kim has shown very strong performance which makes this promotion a very logical one.’

In both the professional and the private domains, a strong and secure network connectivity is essential for certain activities to run smoothly: videoconferences, webinars, distance learning, gaming, video streaming, to name but a few. Very high-speed two-way broadband access is increasingly required to avoid long lag times and high levels of user frustration. This trend is set to increase with the generalisation of teleworking and the adoption of new technologies – such as 8K television – requiring a digital infrastructure that will stand the test of time. In this context, fibre offers all the attributes that the connectivity technology of the future will require – and that will underpin digital innovations for the next decades.

In the early 1980s, Belgium was a pioneer with its cable network and ADSL/VDSL technology – and the deployment of FttH (Fibre-to-the-Home), the latest generation of fibre technology, demonstrates that this commitment still exists today. 10% of houses can already be connected and the process is accelerating.

More than 800 million euros of investment

The creation of the joint venture Unifiber will provide at least 500,000 households and SMEs with access to fibre technology in Wallonia by 2028, which will guarantee them an ultra-fast, stable two-way broadband access with the provider of their choice. The network installed by Unifiber will be made available to all broadband Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in an open, transparent, and non-discriminatory manner. Moreover, the European competition authorities have just given their approval to Unifiber.

The preparations for the deployment of the Unifiber network will start mid-August in the municipalities of Waterloo and Morlanwelz.

The Morlanwelz town council welcomed the Unifiber project. In the coming weeks, the town’s administrators will work with Unifiber to approve the licences which will enable the company to start work. Christian Moureau, the mayor of Morlanwelz, commented: ‘I am very happy that Unifiber chose us as the first municipality in Wallonia for its deployment of their FttH network. Fiber for all homes in our community will allow us to move towards a digital future.’

This opinion is shared in the municipality of Waterloo where Unifiber has established its head office. ‘We are pleased to welcome the new Walloon fibre optic provider to our town,’ stated Cédric Tumelaire, the municipality’s deputy mayor with responsibility for Smart City. ‘We are convinced that fibre will make it easier for many individuals and companies to connect to the internet. In view of the current health crisis and new forms of teleworking, we hope that this will enable our municipality to remain attractive and develop its economic activity.’

Between 2022 and 2023, several tens of thousands of households will already be covered by the Unifiber network. From 2024 onwards, almost 100,000 households will be added each year. The objective is for Unifiber to have at least 500,000 households and SMEs connectable by 2028.

Unifiber will benefit from an investment of more than 800 million euros to construct this state-of-the-art network over the next ten years and to connect households and SMEs. This will enable the creation of approximately thirty direct and several hundred indirect jobs.

Digital Wallonia

Unifiber’s investments will reinforce the Wallonia revival plan. Digital transformation, which includes the development of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT) and automation, are among the priorities of the Walloon government – with a key focus on connectivity.

Fibre-to-the-home delivers a genuine added value:

• Fibre technology improves people’s quality of life by providing what amounts to an unlimited two-way bandwidth, which is vital for thriving applications such as teleworking, video streaming, 4 and 8K television, gaming, eHealth, and distance learning.
• Fibre technology helps to drive employment and boost the economy and innovation.
• Fibre technology has a positive impact on the environment as it consumes less energy than cable and copper.

Nico Weymaere, the CEO of Unifiber, commented: ‘The construction of this open-access network for telecommunication services in Wallonia will enable us to establish an infrastructure which offers Walloon residents and businesspeople everything they need to participate fully in the digital transformation process, thereby contributing to their region’s prosperity.’

Guillaume Boutin, the CEO of Proximus, stated: ‘Our deployment of the fibre network is making good progress and the technology is now being installed in eighteen Belgian cities, with more than 600,000 households and companies already connectable. As already announced, our acceleration of the deployment of the technology is unique in Europe. I am delighted that we have established this partnership with Eurofiber which will accelerate the implementation of fibre networks in Wallonia. Not only that, our investment in Wallonia’s digital infrastructure will enable us to support the economic revival, innovation, and employment, which is vital for our competitivity, both in Wallonia and at the national level.’

According to Alex Goldblum, the CEO of Eurofiber: ‘We are delighted to be able to contribute to the digitalisation of the Walloon region and to partner with Proximus in this endeavour. We are excited that Walloon residents and businesspeople will be able to access the internet in the most rapid and reliable way possible.’

About Eurofiber

Established in Belgium in 2000, Eurofiber conducted its early activitiesin the Netherlands, only to return later to Belgium. Based in Zaventem, Eurofiber now has a vast optic fibre network covering more than 38,000 kilometres in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. Its fibre network and data centres enable Eurofiber to provide companies, organisations and public authorities in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany with open connectivity and intelligent cloud solutions that will stand the test of time. Eurofiber’s objective is to continue its expansion in Europe and broaden its portfolio. The deployment of Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) technology is a key contributor to this objective. Eurofiber and Vattenfall previously created a joint venture to connect 500,000 households and companies in Berlin.

Eurofiber is supported by its shareholders Antin Infrastructure Partners, a French investment fund specialising in infrastructure, and the PGGM Infrastructure Fund.

More information is available at www.eurofiber.com or www.eurofiber.be

About Proximus

The Proximus Group (Euronext Brussels: PROX) is a provider of digital services and communication solutions and is active on the Belgian and international markets. By offering communication and entertainment experiences to residential customers and facilitating the digital transformation of enterprises, it offers a whole range of digital possibilities to enable people to live better and work more efficiently. Its high-performing and interconnected fixed and mobile networks enable Proximus to offer access to data and digital services, at any time and place, as well as a broad range of multimedia content. A pioneer in the field of ICT innovation, Proximus offers integrated solutions based on IoT, data analytics, cloud and security.

Proximus’ ambition is to become the benchmark provider in Europe, supported by its next-generation networks, a profoundly digital mentality, and a spirit of openness towards partnerships and ecosystems, while contributing to the creation of a digital Belgium that is inclusive, secure, sustainable, and prosperous.

In Belgium, the main products and services are marketed under the brands Proximus and Scarlet. The group is also active in Luxembourg as Proximus Luxembourg SA, which combines the Tango and Telindus Luxembourg brands, and in the Netherlands with Telindus Netherlands. The group’s international carrier activities are managed by BICS, one of the main voice operators and the leading provider of mobile data services in the world.

With TeleSign, the group also owns a market leader enjoying strong growth, specialized in digital identity services. Its clients include the leading global internet brands, digital champions and cloud native companies.

At the end of 2020, the Proximus group generated a turnover of just under 5,479 million euros and employed 11,423 people, all of whom are committed to providing their customers with a superior experience.

More information is available at www.proximus.com and www.proximus.be.

Press contact:

Unifiber

Cathy Schoels

cathy.schoels@unifiber.be

 +32 477 680 280

Together, NGN and Eurofiber will seek to accelerate the expansion of NGN’s already extensive network in order to address increasing demand for fiber infrastructure with a nationwide network to be accessible to all German telecom operators, other network operators, multi-national corporations and enterprises in an open and non-discriminatory manner.

Marco Weigand, founder of NGN commented: “With Eurofiber we found the right partner to commercialize NGN’s unique network infrastructure and bring the company to the next level. We are very excited and look forward to working together with Eurofiber’s first-class team to service our current and future customers with an enhanced product offering.”

Alex Goldblum, CEO of Eurofiber: “Our partnership with NGN fits perfectly with our ambitions to play a role upgrading the telecom infrastructure in Germany. Combining NGN's unique network with Eurofiber’s experience in bringing open access networks to the market, we have found the perfect match that will allow customers to freely chose service providers and in many cases stay with their existing service provider, whilst benefiting from the infrastructure provided by Eurofiber”. Hans Lehmann, Managing Director of Strategy and Corporate Development at Eurofiber added: “With NGN and Marco Weigand, we’ve found the ideal partner with a shared vision for our long-term ambitions in Germany.”

The intended partnership is subject to customary regulatory approvals in Germany.

Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Rechtsanwälte Steuerberater PartG mbB are acting as exclusive financial and legal advisors to NGN respectively. Perella Weinberg Partners and Latham & Watkins LLP are acting as financial and legal advisors to Eurofiber respectively.

About NGN Fiber Network KG
NGN is a leading dark fiber provider in Germany that operates and owns a highly strategic fiber network, covering a substantial portion of Germany. NGN serves MNOs, carriers, DCs and FttH operators with dark fiber turn-key solutions as well as FttH/FttC roll-out projects.

About Eurofiber 
Eurofiber has been a provider of industry-leading open digital infrastructure since 2000. Utilizing our own fiberoptic network and datacenters, we provide smart, open, future-proof infrastructure to telecom operators, companies, government bodies and non-profit organizations. With its infrastructure, Eurofiber enables total connectivity for the Smart Society, with a 38,000 km fiberoptic network in The Netherlands, Belgium and France and stretching into Germany. Eurofiber also operates datacenters in the Netherlands and France through Dataplace, Eura DC and Fullsave. 

Eurofiber Group consists of: Eurofiber and DCspine (The Netherlands and Belgium), Dataplace and MatrixMind (The Netherlands), Eurafibre, Fullsave, Lumos, ATE and Eura DC (France).

Eurofiber is backed by its shareholders Antin Infrastructure Partners, a long-term infrastructure investor and the PGGM Infrastructure Fund, part of PGGM Investment Management.

Of all the books on management and leadership, those specifically about leading exceptional talented developers, engineers and ICT-professionals are still hard to find. According to Eric Kuisch this was a gap that needed to be addressed: ‘We are in the midst of the transition towards a digital economy and society. Practically every company is a technology company and ICT professionals are already crucial to the success of virtually every organization. However, it is also evident that the culture and style of leadership in organizations often do not meet the needs of ICT professionals. This especially applies to the select group of top ICT engineers, whom I refer to as 'birds of paradise' in my book.’ From his 30 years of experience in the ICT industry, Kuisch describes in his book what distincts these ‘birds of paradise’ from ‘average’ ICT professionals or ICT engineers, how they think and relate, and how to get them to reach their full potential. Kuisch: ‘There are many misconceptions about ICT engineers, for example that they have fewer social skills and have less of a need for recognition. But, nothing could be further from the truth. They simply express themselves in a slightly different way. If you don't recognize that as a manager, you easily go wrong.’

The book contains seven chapters. Each chapter describes an essential element in leading top ICT professionals and covers a wide range of topics:

• Your top ICT professionals have an impeccable sense of which technological developments are important for the organization. How do you make sure their voices are heard at the right time?
• Your top ICT professionals need context, even more than others, to be able to focus on what is really important. Therefore, as a manager, it's of the essence to explain as clearly as possibleyou can’t emphasize enough how their contribution relates to the wider organizational goals.
• Your expertise will always be inferior to theirs. Accept that and embrace it, it’s that your top ICT engineers have a better understanding of the contents of the job than you. Your task is to create the ideal circumstances for your high performersbest possible working conditions.
• Identify which ideas should be put into motion: How do you recognize that a brilliant idea from your top engineers is ready for (product) launch and how do you ensure a successful launch?
• Your top ICT engineers won’t step into the limelight that easily. How do you make sure they know you will always appreciate and support them?
• Your top ICT engineers find it difficult to ask what they need. That’s where you come in. Ask how you can assist them.
• Building relationships is essential for your top ICT engineers’ happiness at work. As a manager, you take the lead in this.

‘Paradijsvogels’ is currently only available in Dutch.

__________________________________________

Eric Kuisch is a mathematician. His passion for technology led him to KPN, where his responsibilities included mobile networks, and later to Vodafone, as CTO of Germany. He now works as COO at Eurofiber, where (technological) innovation and transformation are once again important themes in his daily work. Eric is also frequently invited to speak as an expert in the field of management and ICT.

In 2020, Eurofiber continued to implement its European growth strategy. Partnering with Vattenfall, it founded the joint venture Vattenfall Eurofiber, which will build a fiberoptic network in Berlin to connect more than 500,000 households and businesses. The joint venture was approved by the European Commission in 2020 and is expected to connect its first customers in 2021. Similarly, Eurofiber and Proximus signed an agreement in October 2020 to form a joint venture aimed at building a fiberoptic network connecting over 500,000 households and businesses in Wallonia. This contract is also subject to the approval of the European Commission and will be executed as soon as that approval is granted.

Last year, Eurofiber acquired three companies in the Netherlands: Brightfiber, Levelfour (fiberoptic activities only) and MatrixMind (majority share), as well as one in France: FullSave. It also announced the acquisition of Nantes-based fiberoptic network company Lumos. This acquisition was finalized in February 2021. In May 2020, Eurofiber company Dataplace opened its sixth datacenter in Hoofddorp, near Amsterdam. In addition to the datacenters in France, Eurofiber operates ten carrier-neutral datacenters at this time.

In October 2020, Eurofiber welcomed pension investor PGGM as a new shareholder. At the same time, Antin Infrastructure Partners renewed its commitment as majority shareholder, partnering together with PGGM to support the next phase of Eurofiber’s growth. Under Antin’s ownership, Eurofiber had already added more than 19,000 kilometers of fiber network and eight datacenters.

Outlook for 2021

Since March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has been affecting all the countries in which Eurofiber operates. However, since digital connectivity and cloud services are now more essential than ever for the economy and society, the crisis has had only a limited impact on Eurofiber’s commercial activities. Delays in network constructions for customers due to government restrictions were also limited, and were rescheduled and completed during the year. Eurofiber’s Executive Board would like to thank all of the company’s customers, partners and colleagues for their excellent contributions and flexibility under these extraordinary circumstances.

* Eurofiber defines adjusted EBITDA as company earnings before depreciation and amortization, adjusted for the effect of any exceptional or extraordinary profits and losses.

Christoph Klein is an industry veteran with over 25 years of experience in managing consulting and C-level management in telecoms and ICT. Most recently, he was Group CEO of BTV Multimedia Group, a leading provider for hardware and services in the broadband industry. Earlier, Klein held senior management and executive positions at Deutsche Telekabel Group, Kabel Deutschland, AT Kearney and others.
 

Growth strategy
In the newly established role of MD Eurofiber Germany, Christoph Klein will be a key member of the executive committee of the Eurofiber Group and will be responsible for developing and executing the Group’s expansion in Germany. Recently, Eurofiber entered the German market with a joint venture with Vattenfall, which is established to connect more than 500,000 households and businesses in Berlin. Eurofiber also owns and manages fiber optic cables between the Netherlands and Hamburg and recently announced it will open a point of presence in Frankfurt. Christoph Klein: ‘Eurofiber has an incredible track-record in providing digital infrastructure of more than 20 years. Bringing Eurofiber´s undisputed competences and capabilities to the highly dynamic market in Germany as part of such a great team is one of the most exciting roles I currently can think of. I am truly looking forward to it.’

Alex Goldblum, CEO Eurofiber: ‘As our European growth strategy is unfolding, it is essential that we have excellent strategic, commercial and operational leadership in all the markets we serve. Christoph brings over 25 years of experience in IT and telecom. With his in-depth knowledge of the market and proven track record he is definitely the right person realize our ambitious growth plans in Germany. I am delighted to welcome him to our team.’
 

About Eurofiber
Eurofiber has been developing, maintaining and expanding its industry-leading, open access digital infrastructure for 20 years. With its fiber optic network and datacenters, Eurofiber is able to provide enterprises, organizations and governments in The Netherlands, Belgium and France with smart, open, future-proof cloud and connectivity solutions. Customers have complete freedom to choose the services, applications and providers they need. Eurofiber’s strategy is aimed at further expanding within Europe and broadening its portfolio. Urban Fiber-to-the-Home (FttH) deployments are a central feature of this expansion strategy, with Eurofiber expecting to execute further FttH projects with a wholesale and open access approach.

Eurofiber Group consists of: Eurofiber, DCspine and MatrixMind (The Netherlands and Belgium), Dataplace (The Netherlands), FullSave, Lumos, Eurafibre, ATE and Eura DC (France).

FullSave President Laurent Bacca: ‘We are excited to become part of Eurofiber, a leading European player that has the vision, the track record and the funds to bring us to the next stage. We look forward to working together in providing our current and future customers with an even wider range of state-of-the art services in Digital Infrastructure.’

Eurofiber CEO Alex Goldblum: ‘With FullSave joining us, we welcome a strong and ambitious regional player that already holds a leading position in Occitanie and has a growing footprint in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. It has excellent staff and management, which has resulted in high year-on-year performance in both operations and customer satisfaction. We are delighted that FullSave is becoming a part of the Eurofiber Group.’

Eurofiber French growth strategy

FullSave is the second acquisition announced by Eurofiber in France in 2020, following the acquisition of Nantes based fiberoptic company Lumos announced on 18 November. Both acquisitions are part of the accelerated French growth strategy, which is aimed at expanding Eurofiber’s French footprint to at least 25 cities by 2025. Eurofiber already has a strong presence in Lille with its companies Eurafibre, ATE and Eura DC. As with Eurafibre and Lumos, Eurofiber aimsto accelerate FullSave’s growth by expanding its network and by extending its market approach to the broader FttX segment, in alignment with Eurofiber’s open access model.

About Eurofiber 

Eurofiber has been a provider of industry-leading open digital infrastructure since 2000. Utilizing our own fiberoptic network and datacenters, we provide smart, open, future-proof cloud and connectivity solutions to companies, government bodies and non-profit organizations. Eurofiber enables total connectivity for the Smart Society, providing connectivity for all FTTx purposes with 38,000 km fiberoptic network in The Netherlands, Belgium and France and stretching into Germany. 

This provides our customers the complete freedom to choose the services, applications and providers they need to tap into the full potential of digital innovation. Eurofiber also operates nine datacenters in the Netherlands and France through Dataplace and Eura DC. Supplementing Eurofiber’s vital network and datacenter infrastructure, we also offer interconnectivity between nearly all carrier-neutral datacenters in The Netherlands and Belgium through the DCspine platform. 

Eurofiber is laying the foundation under the digital society, which is why the Dutch government has assigned Eurofiber the status of ‘vital infrastructure’. 

In September, Eurofiber welcomed pension fund PGGM as a new minority shareholder and announced the renewed commitment of its major shareholder, French long-term infrastructure investor Antin Infrastructure Partners, further strengthening its long-term financial position.

Eurofiber Group consists of: Eurofiber and DCspine (The Netherlands and Belgium), Dataplace and MatrixMind (The Netherlands), Eurafibre, ATE and Eura DC (France).

French growth strategy
Eurofiber plans to accelerate Lumos’ growth by further expanding its network and by extending its market approach to the broader FTTx segment, aligned with Eurofiber’s open access model.

Eurofiber CEO Alex Goldblum: ‘We are delighted to join forces with Lumos, which made a flying start and already has a reputation of excellence. This company joining Eurofiber marks a next step in the realization of our French expansion strategy. Since November 2019, we’ve already had a strong presence in Lille, and with this acquisition we expand to the metropolitan area of Nantes. It is our aim to further extend our network to other areas in France and by 2025, we expect Eurofiber to have operations in at least 25 French cities.’

Recently, the company welcomed Dutch pension fund PGGM as a shareholder, in addition to France-based Antin Infrastructure Partners, which holds the majority of Eurofiber shares.

About Eurofiber
Eurofiber has been a provider of industry-leading open digital infrastructure since 2000. Utilizing our own fiberoptic network and datacenters, we provide smart, open, future-proof cloud and connectivity solutions to companies, government bodies and non-profit organizations. Eurofiber enables total connectivity for the Smart Society, providing connectivity for all FTTx purposes with our 37,200 km fiberoptic network in the Netherlands, Belgium and France and stretching into Germany. This allows our customers complete freedom to choose the services, applications and providers they need to tap into the full potential of digital innovation. Eurofiber also operates nine datacenters in the Netherlands and France through Dataplace and Eura DC. Supplementing Eurofiber’s vital network and datacenter infrastructure, we also offer interconnectivity between nearly all carrier-neutral datacenters in The Netherlands and Belgium through the DCspine platform.Eurofiber is laying the foundation under the digital society, which is why the Dutch government has assigned Eurofiber the status of ‘vital infrastructure’.

Eurofiber Group consists of: Eurofiber and DCspine (The Netherlands and Belgium), Dataplace and MatrixMind (The Netherlands), Eurafibre, ATE and Eura DC (France).

The MatrixMind platform enables Eurofiber to easily connect its current IaaS, co-location and connectivity services and offer them to its clients. Eric Kuisch, Chief Operating Officer at Eurofiber, explains: ‘Data continues to grow exponentially, accompanied by increased demand for fiberoptic connections. We see a growing need among our customers for flexibility. They want to be able to decide for themselves if they want to move to the private or public cloud, for example, and how fast – and they also want to be able to partially go back or switch providers if necessary. In terms of connectivity, the need for flexibility translates into the demand for real-time scalable capacity, which we offer through our DCspine platform. MatrixMind enables us to offer our customers integrated solutions as well as the desired flexibility in their hybrid and multi-cloud strategy. Accordingly, the platform will play a significant role in our portfolio.’

‘Scalable, dedicated connections have always been the basis for the cloud integration platforms we design, realize and manage for our customers,’ says MatrixMind CEO Lucas den Os. ‘These platforms are hybrid and multi-cloud in nature, almost by definition, and are expected to continue to expand in terms of locations, services and service providers, simply because new business initiatives demand it. By default, our solution is designed to accommodate that flexibility. Joining Eurofiber offers us great opportunities to keep pursuing our growth ambitions, in terms of turnover, innovative capacity and professionalism. With Eurofiber’s portfolio, we can now also offer the associated private and high performance connections, co-location and private cloud services, all under the same umbrella, taking final responsibility for the entire hybrid cloud chain.’

Eurofiber has acquired a majority of the shares in MatrixMind B.V. as of 6 November 2020. All current employees, including the board of directors, will continue to be employed by the company.

About Eurofiber

Eurofiber has been a provider of industry-leading open digital infrastructure since 2000. Utilizing our own fiberoptic network and datacenters, we provide smart, open, future-proof cloud and connectivity solutions to companies, government bodies and non-profit organizations. Customers have complete freedom to choose the services, applications and providers they need, allowing them to tap into the full potential of digital innovation. Eurofiber has a 37,200 km fiberoptic network in the Netherlands, Belgium and France and stretching into Germany. This network is expanded by 40 km per week on average. Eurofiber companies Dataplace and Eura DC operate nine datacenters in the Netherlands and France. Supplementing that vital infrastructure, we also offer interconnectivity between nearly all carrier-neutral datacenters in The Netherlands and Belgium through the DCspine platform. Eurofiber is laying the foundation under the digital society, which is why the Dutch government has assigned Eurofiber the status of ‘vital infrastructure’. 

Eurofiber Group consists of: Eurofiber and DCspine (The Netherlands and Belgium), Dataplace (The Netherlands), Eurafibre, ATE and Eura DC (France). 

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Note to editors and press:

Contact

For more information, you can contact:

Eurofiber 
Armand Rouw 
Head of Corporate Communications 
+31 6 3485 1722 
armand.rouw@eurofiber.com 

MatrixMind 
Lucas den Os 
CEO +31 6 2783 7975 
lucas.denos@matrixmind.nl

Eurofiber is a provider of industry-leading open digital infrastructure with nine datacenters and 37,200 km fiberoptic network in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Eurofiber recently strengthened its position for fiberoptic connections in Dutch business parks by acquiring Brightfiber. The acquisition of Levelfour Networks’ fiberoptic activities represents the next step in implementing its strategy in this market. ‘The business community is in the midst of a digital transformation,’ says Paul Naastepad, managing director of Eurofiber Netherlands. 'Critical business processes are increasingly dependent on the availability of secure, high-capacity digital connections, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises. Quality requirements, which were mainly dictated by large companies and organizations until recently, are also becoming increasingly common in SMEs. This gives Eurofiber room to expand in these segments as well. The acquisition of the fiber optic networks of Levelfour Networks is fully aligned with this strategy.’

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Note to editors and press:

Contact

For more information, you can contact:

Eurofiber

Armand Rouw

Head of Corporate Communications

+31 6 3485 1722

armand.rouw@eurofiber.com

Levelfour

Colinda van Leeuwen

+31 6 1035 8584

c.vanleeuwen@levelfour.nl

Guillaume Boutin, CEO of Proximus: ‘I am very pleased that we have signed the final agreement with Eurofiber this week. As announced in July, we plan to further accelerate and expand our fiber deployment plans in Belgium and this collaboration will allow us to connect at least 500,000 homes and businesses to fiber in Wallonia within this collaboration. This strategic partnership marks a major step forward to build the most future-proof and open network for Belgium and will allow to rollout Fiber-to-the-Home faster, to even more families and businesses and more cost-efficiently, in line with our #inspire2022 strategy’.

Eurofiber CEO Alex Goldblum: ‘We are delighted to have signed this agreement and look forward to creating a connected society for the people, organizations and companies in Wallonia’.

Eurofiber has been developing, maintaining and expanding its industry-leading, open digital infrastructure for 20 years now. Utilizing its fiber-optic network and datacenters, Eurofiber provides enterprises, organizations and governments in Belgium, The Netherlands and France with smart, open, future-proof cloud and connectivity solutions. Customers have complete freedom to choose the services, applications and providers they need. Eurofiber’s strategy is aimed at further expanding within Europe and broadening its portfolio. In July, Eurofiber announced its collaboration with Proximus in Wallonia, followed by the announcement of a joint venture with Vattenfall to build and operate an open-access fiber-optic network in Berlin, which equally will be able to connect 500,000+ households and thousands of businesses.

Note for editors:

Contact:

Details about the agreement and next steps by the joint venture will be shared after approval by the competent authorities.

For more information about Eurofiber, please contact:

Armand Rouw

Head of Corporate Communications

+316 34851722

Antin acquired Eurofiber in May 2015. The largest independent provider of full fiber digital infrastructure dedicated to B2B customers in the Netherlands and Belgium with a growing presence in France and recent market entry into Germany, Eurofiber owns and operates an open access fibre network allowing any service provider to use Eurofiber’s infrastructure to provide connectivity services to its end customers.

Under Antin ownership, Eurofiber executed a series of value creation initiatives that positioned the company for continued rapid growth. Close to €400 million in capital expenditure was invested, more than 19,000 kilometres of fibre optic cables and eight datacenters were added to its network. Recently, the firm entered the Fiber-to-the-Home segment through a partnership with Vattenfall in Berlin and the signing of an MOU with Proximus in Belgium. Today, Eurofiber is one of the leading B2B digital infrastructure companies in Europe with a network spanning over 37,000 kilometres and connecting more than 28,000 business customers.

Antin’s renewed commitment as majority shareholder will allow the firm to remain alongside management, working together to extend Eurofiber’s track record of growth. Eurofiber will continue to pursue its strategy of further expanding within Europe including broadening its portfolio through additional Fiber-to-the-Home projects with a wholesale and open access approach.

Alex Goldblum, CEO of Eurofiber, commented: “We are delighted to welcome PGGM as shareholder and to continue our excellent relationship with Antin. Demand for digital infrastructure is growing robustly and with Antin and PGGM as partners we can continue our rapid deployment, in turn further enabling the European digital society.”

Robert Hartog, Head of Communication Infrastructure Investments at PGGM, said: “With this acquisition the PGGM Infrastructure Fund has added a new and promising asset to our already well diversified portfolio of infrastructure investments. The digitization of work and daily life clearly provides interesting opportunities for long-term pension capital and we are excited to work with Antin and Eurofiber to grow the company and enable it to continue its leading position in the market.’’

Stephane Ifker, Senior Partner with Antin Infrastructure Partners, said: “Antin is very pleased to welcome PGGM as its partner in Eurofiber. Together we will continue supporting Eurofiber as it prepares for its next phase of growth. Antin is convinced Eurofiber is well positioned to both continue its organic growth in the Netherlands, Belgium and France as well as expand via M&A and strategic partnerships across the fragmented European fiber market. The recent entry into the German market in partnership with Vattenfall is a perfect illustration of that strategy.”

Antin was advised by UBS and Société Générale as financial advisers, Kirkland & Ellis as legal counsel and Loyens & Loeff as tax and legal counsel.

PGGM was advised by Nomura as financial advisor, Allen & Overy as legal counsel and EY as tax advisor.

The transaction is expected to close at the end of October 2020.

Media Contacts

PGGM

Maurice Wilbrink

Corporate Communication

maurice.wilbrink@pggm.nl

+31 (0)30 277 97 35

Eurofiber

Armand Rouw

Head of Corporate Communications

armand.rouw@eurofiber.com

+316 34851722

Antin InfrastructurePartners

Nicolle Graugnard

Communication Director

nicolle.graugnard@antin-ip.com

Tanja Wielgoss, CEO of Vattenfall Wärme Berlin AG: "We are delighted that creative and clever colleagues developed this idea outside our core business and that we have now found the perfect partner for the joint venture: Eurofiber has proven know-how, experience and expertise in the construction and operation of fiber optic networks in urban centers. Together we want to give a boost to digitization, which this city and very many Berliners, whether professionally or privately, eagerly expect.”

Eurofiber CEO Alex Goldblum: “Digital connectivity is vital for the economy and society. The high-quality open fiber network that we are going to realize with Vattenfall will help thousands of companies and organizations and hundreds of thousands of households in Berlin prepare for the future. We are proud to be able to put our expertise as an enabler of the smart society to work on this great project and are looking forward to the collaboration.”

The contracts signed yesterday are subject to the approval of the EU antitrust authorities and are to be executed immediately after the corresponding approval.

About Vattenfall

As the largest heating company within the Swedish Vattenfall Group, Vattenfall Wärme Berlin wants to enable a fossil-free energy supply within one generation. In cooperation with the State of Berlin and regional partners we are driving the transformation towards fossil-free heating solutions in the German capital. Vattenfall Wärme Berlin focuses on customized supply concepts in the districts, smartly controlled heating systems and 100 percent local generation with a growing share of renewable energies.

About Eurofiber

Eurofiber has been developing, maintaining and expanding its industry-leading, open access digital infrastructure for 20 years. With its fiber optic network and datacenters, Eurofiber is able to provide enterprises, organizations and governments in The Netherlands, Belgium and France with smart, open, future-proof cloud and connectivity solutions. Customers have complete freedom to choose the services, applications and providers they need. Eurofiber’s strategy is aimed at further expanding within Europe and broadening its portfolio. Urban Fiber-to-the-Home (FttH) deployments are a central feature of this expansion strategy, with Eurofiber expecting to execute further FttH projects with a wholesale and open access approach.

Eurofiber is backed by Antin Infrastructure Partners, a long-term infrastructure investor, as its sole shareholder. An experienced investor in telecommunications infrastructure for nearly a decade, Antin brings specific in-depth expertise in the fiber sector through its investments in Eurofiber, CityFibre (UK), Lyntia (Spain) and Firstlight (US).

“The business community is in the midst of a digital transformation, which has major consequences for what companies demand in terms of the capacity and reliability of their digital connections,” says Paul Naastepad, managing director of Eurofiber Netherlands. “Bandwidth and redundancy requirements, which were mainly dictated by large companies and organizations until recently, are also becoming increasingly common in small and mid-sized enterprises. This gives Eurofiber room to expand in these segments as well. The acquisition of Brightfiber fits in this picture.”

End of March, Proximus expressed its ambition to accelerate the roll-out of its fiber network as a crucial pillar of the renewed #inspire2022 strategy, with the purpose of connecting 2.4 million living units by 2025. To achieve this, Proximus committed to an acceleration of its investments to guarantee a faster and more efficient fiber roll-out, while adopting an open mindset towards cooperation and co-investment.

By joining forces with Eurofiber, an experienced provider of digital infrastructure since 2000, Proximus will be able to leverage efficiency gains in fiber deployment as well as realise a significant acceleration and a substantial increase of the coverage over and above its announced roll-out plans to pass 2.4M living units by 2025 in Belgium.

This agreement marks a major step forward towards delivering on the gigabit network of the future to the benefit of its customers, employees, stakeholders and society at large. Fiber is the ultimate broadband platform allowing to transmit data at the speed of light while being more energy-efficient. It allows a stable, ultra-fast and low-latency internet experience without interruptions, no matter how many people or devices are connected, and offers the stability and reliability that businesses need in their daily operations.

Eurofiber has been developing, maintaining and expanding its industry-leading, open digital infrastructure for 20 years now. Thanks to its fiber-optic network and datacenters, Eurofiber is able to provide enterprises, organizations, governments in Belgium, The Netherlands and France with smart, open, future-proof cloud and connectivity solutions. Customers have complete freedom to choose the services, applications and providers they need. Eurofiber’s strategy is aimed at further expanding within Europe and broadening its portfolio. Fiber-to-the-Home (FttH) is a central feature of this expansion strategy, with Eurofiber expecting to execute further FttH projects with a wholesale and open access approach. Collaborating with Proximus in this fiber-optic network project is part of the realization of this strategy.

Guillaume Boutin, CEO of Proximus

"Partnerships are at the heart of our #inspire2022 strategy and we are more committed than ever to connect as many families and businesses as possible with the network of the future. The envisioned collaboration with Eurofiber perfectly fits within this strategy. We have a long-standing commercial relationship with Eurofiber and are confident that they are the right partner to support the acceleration of our roll-out in Wallonia. I am excited to go ahead with the further discussions and work closely together to bring fiber faster to even more citizens and businesses in Belgium.”
 

Alex Goldblum, CEO of Eurofiber

"Digital connectivity is vital for the economy and society. The high-quality open fiber network that we are going to realise with Proximus will help thousands of companies and organisations and hundreds of thousands of households in Wallonia get ready for the future. We are proud to be able to put our expertise to work on this great project and are looking forward to the collaboration.”

Proximus and Eurofiber will provide a more detailed update once a final agreement is reached.

More information on www.proximus.com/press
Press Relations department: +32 2 202 44 44

Connecting networks

Eurofiber is involved in 5G-Blueprint on the basis of its expertise in fiberoptic infrastructure, which will be needed for this volume of data traffic. Previously, Eurofiber was an initiator of the 5G Charter. This document outlines the basic principles for successful 5G rollout, as formulated by a wide range of industry partners that included telecom companies, the business community, interest groups, knowledge institutes and local and national government authorities. Innovation Officer Ivo Veerman: “Eurofiber has a densely deployed fiberoptic network extending 36,000 kilometers in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Telecom companies rely on this high-quality network to connect their base stations for mobile data traffic. Over half of the mobile 4G data traffic in the Netherlands currently runs over our network. We are looking forward to collaborating on 5G-Blueprint, because the 5G technology offers completely new possibilities, including in the field of mobility. It aligns seamlessly with our role as a lifeline for the digital society.” Within the research project, Eurofiber will be exploring how to deploy various fiberoptic networks as optimally and reliably as possible to achieve cross-border 5G connectivity. One of the important questions here is how to achieve interconnection of the various fiberoptic networks that are already in place, providing a secure and cost-effective foundation for future 5G applications. “We have extensive experience in linking networks that have different technical specifications, and we are more than happy to contribute our expertise to this project,” Veerman states.

Read the press release from the European Commission here.

Maarssen (The Netherlands) - May 26, 2020 - Responding to increasing demand for capacity and carrier neutral connectivity in Europe, QTS Realty Trust (NYSE: QTS), leading provider of hybrid colocation and mega scale data center solutions, today announced an agreement with Eurofiber Netherlands, a leading provider of digital infrastructure to provide dark fiber between QTS’ Groningen and Eemshaven, Netherlands data centers.

Eurofiber’s redundant dark fiber and lit services support QTS’ hybrid colocation and hyperscale data center services availability to organizations in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. Eurofiber’s DCspine, the innovative Dutch platform for on-demand cloud and data center connectivity, will enable QTS’ customers and partners to connect over a software-defined network, reducing cost and enabling rapid connectivity and provisioning across a single platform.

Eurofiber and DCspine also enable direct access and connectivity to some of the world’s largest hyperscale cloud providers, including Google Cloud Platform, AWS and Microsoft Azure.In addition, the new COBRA subsea cable (COpenhagen-BRussels-Amsterdam) connects with the new HAVFRUE (AEC-2) subsea cable and terminates in QTS Eemshaven. HAVFRUE (AEC-2) is the first new undersea cable traversing the North Atlantic to connect mainland Northern Europe to the U.S. in nearly two decades. This positions QTS Eemshaven as a new global Network Access Point in the Netherlands that will accelerate global interconnection for customers in the Netherlands, northern Europe and beyond.“We are pleased to work with Eurofiber as we expand QTS’ capability in our European footprint,” said Jan Daan (J.D.) Luycks - Managing Director, QTS. “Eurofiber is an undisputed interconnection leader in Europe and brings extensive market knowledge and synergies that will help accelerate QTS’ European business momentum.”

QTS’ Groningen and Eemshaven data centers encompass 158,000 sq. ft. of raised floor and approximately 30 gross megawatts of capacity within QTS’ global footprint. The 45,000 sq. ft. Groningen facility supports approximately 20 existing colocation tenants, while the 113,000 sq. ft. Eemshaven facility is expected to support QTS’ hyperscale growth strategy with approximately 20 gross megawatts of built-out and fully available capacity.“QTS is one of the world’s leading data center providers with a strong financial backing making them an ideal partner for our broad portfolio of fiber and lit services as they enter the market,” said Rhoderick van der Wyck, Director International Business, Eurofiber. “We share similar growth strategies and recognize the opportunity to lead the establishment of Eemshaven as a global interconnection hub serving increasing demand for hyperscale and hybrid colocation solutions.”

Eurofiber recently completed construction on a new fiber-optic path connecting QTS Eemshaven with QTS Groningen to offer two fully separate fiber-optic connections between Groningen and Amsterdam. Situated directly along the coast, with access to an undersea cable and abundant energy supply, Eemshaven has emerged as a new global interconnection point for hyperscalers based on the presence of this fully separate fiber-optic route to Groningen, Amsterdam, Hamburg and other European cities.

About Eurofiber

Eurofiber has been a provider of industry-leading open digital infrastructure since 2000. Relying on our own fiberoptic network and datacenters, we provide smart, open, future-proof cloud and connectivity solutions to companies, government bodies and non-profit organizations. Customers have complete freedom to choose the services, applications and providers they need, allowing them to tap into the full potential of digital innovation. Eurofiber has an 33,000 km fiberoptic network covering the Netherlands, Belgium and Northern France and stretching into Germany. This network is expanded by 40 km per week on average. Eurofiber companies Dataplace and Eura DC exploit eight datacenters in the Netherlands and France. Supplementing that vital infrastructure, we also offer interconnectivity between nearly all carrier-neutral datacenters in the Benelux through the innovative DCspine platform. Eurofiber is laying the foundation under the digital society, which is why the Dutch government has assigned Eurofiber the status of ‘vital infrastructure’.

About QTS

QTS Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: QTS) is a leading provider of data center solutions across a diverse footprint spanning more than 7 million square feet of owned mega scale data center space throughout North America and Europe. Through its software-defined data center platform, QTS is able to deliver secure, compliant infrastructure solutions, robust connectivity and premium customer service to leading hyperscale technology companies, enterprises, and government entities. Visit QTS at www.qtsdatacenters.com, call toll-free 877.QTS.DATA or follow on Twitter @DataCenters_QTS.

Media Contact: Carter B. Cromley (703) 861-7245 carter.cromley@qtsdatacenters.com

Gerben van der Veen, Managing Director of Dataplace: “As business activity in the Amsterdam metropolitan area continues to grow rapidly, demand for colocation services is also increasing. We are delighted that we can now provide datacenter solutions in the region from this brand-new location. Dataplace is a leading national player, and the opening of our sixth datacenter at this location allows us also to raise our international profile, while retaining our regional personality and personal approach as well as a strong customer focus.” 

Jan Bonke, Manager Operations of Dataplace: “We relied on our own expertise and experience to design the technical systems and installations entirely in house. Our engineers created a 2N solution that is configured for a fully separated A & B power supply. This design fully meets the needs and demands that the market currently places on a hypermodern datacenter.”

Alex Goldblum, CEO of Eurofiber: "This expansion gives Eurofiber a national cloud infrastructure in the Netherlands, providing a perfect platform for national and international parties alike. It represents another significant milestone for Dataplace, and by extension for Eurofiber, in line with our growth ambition in Europe. As part of this strategy we also recently acquired Eura DC, which operates two datacenters in France. Our digital infrastructure currently consists of eight hypermodern datacenters and 36,000 kilometres of installed fiberoptic cable.”

In March, the COVID-19 crisis affected all of the countries in which Eurofiber operates. Because digital connectivity and cloud services are now more vital than ever for the economy and society, the crisis has not yet had a major impact on Eurofiber’s commercial activities. There are currently no significant delays in network construction for customers in the Netherlands. This is not the case in France and Belgium, however, where government authorities have imposed restrictions on the delivery of new projects. Eurofiber expects to be able to largely compensate for the financial consequences of this in the course of 2020.* Eurofiber defines adjusted EBITDA as company earnings before depreciation and amortisation, adjusted for the effect of any exceptional or extraordinary profits and losses. Read more in the overview ‘Eurofiber 2019 Highlights’.

About Eurofiber

Eurofiber has been a provider of industry-leading open digital infrastructure since 2000. Relying on our own fiberoptic network and datacenters, we provide smart, open, future-proof cloud and connectivity solutions to companies, government bodies and non-profit organizations. Customers have complete freedom to choose the services, applications and providers they need, allowing them to tap into the full potential of digital innovation. Eurofiber has 36,000 km fiberoptic network covering the Netherlands, Belgium and France and stretching into Germany. This network is expanded by 40 km per week on average. Eurofiber companies Dataplace and Eura DC operate eight datacenters in the Netherlands and France. Supplementing that vital infrastructure, we also offer interconnectivity between nearly all carrier-neutral datacenters in The Netherlands and Belgium through the DCspine platform. Eurofiber is laying the foundation under the digital society, which is why the Dutch government has assigned Eurofiber the status of ‘vital infrastructure’.Eurofiber Group consists of: Eurofiber and DCspine (The Netherlands and Belgium), Dataplace (The Netherlands), Eurafibre, ATE and Eura DC (France).

Note to editors and press:

For more information, please contact: Armand Rouw, Tel. +31 (0)6 3485 1722, e-mail armand.rouw@eurofiber.com.

Alex Goldblum, CEO of Eurofiber: ‘We are very happy to join forces with Eurafibre, ATE and Eura DC. The companies fit perfectly in our European growth ambition, especially given their focus and track record for very high customer satisfaction.’ Eurafibre, ATE and Eura DC Chief Executive Maxence Rousseau: ‘We want our companies to get to the next phase and were looking for a solid partner who could help us in realizing that ambition. In Eurofiber, I believe we have found the perfect match on operational and commercial as well as cultural levels. We look forward to working together in serving our current and future customers.’

Both CEO/CTO Maxence Rousseau and CFO/COO Sophie Lebrecht will stay in their current roles within the company structure.