Open Fiber is extending its collaboration with Vodafone for the development in Italy of ultra-wideband connectivity services for fibre to the home (FTTH).

The agreement, which is already active in around two million households and businesses across 13 cities has been expanded to an additional 258 cities as part of the next wave of the fast broadband network rollout. This includes Clusters A and B - home to around 60% of the Italian population.

Aberdeen is set to become Scotland's first gigabit-speed fibre broadband city following an extended partnership between Vodafone and CityFibre to introduce a gigabit-capable full fibre broadband network under the two companies’ fibre to the premises (FTTP) programme. CityFibre will invest at least £40 million of private funds in the city-wide roll-out, after which nearly every home and business will be able to access to gigabit-speed broadband.

Milton Keynes is set to become the first community to benefit from gigabit-capable ‘full fibre’ broadband under the new Vodafone and CityFibre fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) programme. The project will see CityFibre invest at least £40 million into the city’s digital infrastructure.

Vodafone and CityFibre have announced a long-term strategic partnership to bring fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) infrastructure to up to five million UK homes and businesses by 2025.

The partnership represents ‘one of the most significant developments in UK telecommunications since the launch of ADSL broadband around 17 years ago’, the companies said in a statement.

Vodafone Group and multimedia company NOS have signed an agreement to deploy and share a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network that will reach around 2.6 million homes and businesses in Portugal. The partnership also covers mobile infrastructure, including at least 200 mobile towers.

The two companies will provide reciprocal access to each other’s networks on commercially agreed terms while retaining the freedom to decide how to provide retail services to customers.

Vodafone plans to invest about €2 billion over the next four years to provide around 13.7 million new gigabit broadband connections to homes and businesses in Germany, its biggest European market.

Under the Gigabit Investment Plan, Vodafone Germany will target 100,000 companies in around 2,000 business parks, one million homes in rural areas, and 12.6 million cable customers.

Vodafone Germany has signed a cooperation agreement with fibre network specialist Deutsche Glasfaser to deploy fibre networks to commercial areas in the city of Düsseldorf.

Deutsche Glasfaser is the largest provider of fibre-to-the-home networks in Germany, and is engaged in a major build-out that will see its footprint expand from an estimated 235,000 households in February 2017 to 450,000 by the end of 2018. The Borken, Münsterland-headquartered company was started by Dutch private investor Reggeborgh and is now majority owned by investment firm KKR.