Resurfacing

I'll skip my normal apology for not posting recently, but you might want to consult this site for some very fine examples from others. No doubt somewhere therein lie elements true to my own recent experience, though I can confirm that I have definitely not been working on a Queen musical.

Life is complex and challenging, 'nuff said.

So, to return to EuroTelcoblog topics of interest, a friend on the Fiberevolution list points to this blockbuster news out of The Netherlands. Essentially, two large public pension funds in the country are combining to launch a new EUR1bn fund with the purpose of consolidating and expanding existing fiber/FTTH networks over the next ten years, in a project that may ultimately end up as a EUR10bn ticket. The new fund, Communications Infrastructure Fund (CIF), will also invest in wireless towers, which is entirely sensible given that the fiber network will provide the most robust backhaul available in the country.

I've been wondering for some time when we might see this kind of fund emerge, so it is a welcome development, and should put some genuine financial firepower behind the development of open access networks, at least in countries where the financial resources still exist to fund them. In my view, this structure better aligns the financial return profiles of the investors with the durations of the projects. Pension funds by definition have to plan for stable returns over the next 50 years; telcos and MSOs are enslaved to the 3 - 5 year time horizons demanded by shareholders, often coinciding roughly with the lifespan of management teams...