DWS invests in fiber-optic expansion of Deutsche GigaNetz GmbH

DWS Group, an asset manager belonging to Deutsche Bank, is investing in Deutsche GigaNetz GmbH in a big way to drive fiber rollout.

DWS invests in Deutsche GigaNetz

Deutsche GigaNetz has landed a new investor. DWS Group, which is part of Deutsche Bank, is joining as a major investor. Founder InfraRed Capital Partners, however, remains as the main investor. InfraRed manages an equity fund volume of around $12 billion and plans to increase its stake in Deutsche GigaNetz even further, according to the press release.

“With a planned investment volume of 3 billion euros, our goal so far has been to install more than one million households with FTTH (Fiber To The Home), i.e. a fiber-optic connection directly to the customer’s home”, explains Jan Georg Budden, CEO of Deutsche GigaNetz GmbH.

In the past two years, these goals have already been significantly exceeded. Already today one works with over 100 cities and municipalities, as well as the two Gigabit regions Heilbronn Franconia and FrankfurtRheinMain together, in order to be able to offer fiber optics surface covering. The next step will be the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, Thuringia and Saxony.

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Three-digit million amount

According to information from the Handelsblatt, DWS plans to become the majority shareholder of Deutsche GigaNetz GmbH in the medium term. To this end, the Deutsche Bank fund subsidiary initially intends to invest a mid-three-digit million euro amount.

DWS is looking forward to the cooperation with Deutsche GigaNetz and is confident to “thus make a crucial investment especially for Germany,” reveals Thomas Kalthöfer, Senior Principal for Infrastructure Investments at DWS.

At Deutsche GigaNetz, one wants to thus expand the initial focus on the retail and business segment together with the two major investors, iwe Jan Geldmacher, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Deutsche GigaNetz reveals. In cooperation with the municipalities, the company wants to enable the connection to the mobile network stations required for the expansion of the 5-G network.

DWS, meanwhile, is impressed by Deutsche GigaNetz’s greenfield approach and sees it as the right strategy for driving forward digitization in Germany. Together, they want to realize a future-oriented, 100-percent fiber-optic infrastructure within Germany that will enable better and more accessible Internet coverage for communities that were previously less well connected.