Swisscom, Salt Form FTTH Partnership

Swisscom has entered into a fibre-optic partnership with Salt. 

Thanks to this partnership, investments are bundled together, existing network capacities are optimally exploited and the variety of services on offer is further expanded. Through a long-term fibre-optic partnership as part of Swisscom’s Network Strategy 2025, Swisscom and Salt are confirming the successful collaboration model between industry players based on the principle of open networks.

Investments are bundled together and network capacities are optimally exploited. Society and the economy benefit from greater innovation and a wider variety of offers. The fibre-optic partnership builds on an existing business relationship between the two companies: For several years, Salt has been using physical Layer 1 access to Swisscom optical fibres in the point-to-point architecture for its residential customer offerings. As part of the fibre-optic partnership, Salt is investing in a long-term right to use Swisscom’s fibre-optic connections and thus is participating in the high network investments and the associated business risks. This means that the company now also has its own physical Layer 1 access in Swisscom’s FTTH fibre-optic networks in the point-to-multipoint architecture, which Swisscom has been building since 2020 and will be expanding by 2025, and on which Salt can offer and operate its own services. Swisscom continues to bear overall responsibility for network planning, network expansion and maintenance, and remains the owner of the infrastructure.

Swisscom concluded its first cooperation agreements with energy suppliers in 2009, and by 2015 one million connections had already been jointly connected via FTTH. In the same year, Swisscom began rolling out innovative 'fibre-to-the-street' (FTTS) technologies in all Swiss municipalities, which will continue until the end of 2021 – thus laying the foundations for later FTTH expansion.