Marcus Kleiner
Hamburg Commercial Bank financing expansion of broadband network in Austria
Hamburg – Hamburg Commercial Bank will provide the Austrian broadband company Infotech with a loan in the amount of € 30 million for a rollout of an FTTH-Network (fiber to the home).
This is the first project finance scheme for a broadband and fiber optic project in Austria. The objective of the project ‘Cybercity’ is to supply permanent broadband to a total of more than 30 communities in the Innviertel (literally German for ‘Inn quarter’), the most north-western part of Austria. A total of 20,000 households and business customers are to be provided with broadband connections.
Infotech is a fast-growing broadband company in Upper Austria (Oberösterreich) and has its base in Ried im Innkreis. The company has been building FTTH structures and backbones (the core of telecommunication networks with very high data transfer rates) in Ried and its surroundings since 2001.
“Given the rapid expansion of broadband and fiber optic in Austria, this is a landmark deal with great visibility – it once again underscores our profound expertise in this market,” said Dr. Markus Kleiner, Head of Infrastructure & Logistics at Hamburg Commercial Bank. The Bank is one of the leading German lenders for fiber-optic expansion and also active on the European market.
“We will become a big player on the domestic broadband market with the means provided by this finance. Countless communities have already expressed their interest in fiber optic expansion, and we will now be able to meet this demand even more quickly,” said Infotech’s CEO Bernhard Schuster.
