Fibre boost for Norway's west as prices plummet

A veritable price war has broken out over enterprise fibre broadband in western Norway.

The cost of fibre for business customers has fallen 30 to 40 percent over the past 12 months both in the region, which covers city of Bergen and Hordaland county, fibre provider BKK Marked told ZDNet.

BKK Marked, the local power company in Hordaland, is by far the largest provider of fibre broadband for businesses in the local area with 1,669 enterprise customers at end of 2012. This makes BKK the second largest operator for business fibre access in the country, according to figures from Norway's telecom regulator, Post- ogTeletilsynet (NPT).

BKK competes with nationwide operators such as Broadnet, TDC and Telenor for enterprise customers in this part of the country.

"We are aiming for the 100 largest companies in Hordaland, and putting the most effort in here. The price competition is fierce, and has resulted in a price fall in the order of 30 to 40 percent in the last 12 months," Erik Korvald, general manager of BKK Marked, told telecoms news service Telecom Revy.

Telenor has also highlighted Hordaland as one of the company's two main areas of focus for fibre broadband development in Norway.

From xDSL to fibre

Fibre internet access for businesses is a slow-moving market in Norway.

At the start of this year, only 19,000 companies used fibre connectivity. However, the figure doesn't cover the number of connections each company had — larger companies may have hundreds of fibre connections, others just one. IP VPN customers carried over fibre are also exempt from this statistic. By way of comparison, over 109,000 companies had xDSLinternet connection at the start of the year, according to the NPT.

These customers are obvious targets for Telenor's efforts to grow its fibre business in Norway, as the incumbent dominates the business xDSL market with its 63,000 customers in this segment.