nöGIG – an Austrian Success Model with Open Access

nöGIG (Niederösterreichische Glasfaserinfrastruktur GmbH) is a state-owned infrastructure company in the province of Lower Austria (North Eastern area of Austria, bordering to Czech Republic and Slovakia). nöGIG builds passive fiber networks in rural areas and then leases them to network operators. Services are provided by various service providers, so the overall set-up is that of typical Open Access network.

Image removed.

One of the network operators in the nöGIG network is Optisis, a partner of Waystream. For many years, they have now operated the growing nöGIG network in one of the four regions where nöGIG is rolling out fiber. The region around the city of Gmünd has a potential of ca. 10.000 households, of which 50% are connected resp. pre-contracted.

From the beginning, Optisis has relied on Waystream access and aggregation switches for its network.

“We believe that Waystream’s point-to-point technology offers the perfect reliability and scalability that we need to efficiently operate this network,” says Robert Bauman, CEO of Optisis Austria.

“Especially in a network that is deployed in a sparsely populated region, technical problems mean that our technicians have long distances to cover – resulting in high cost for maintenance. Therefore reliability and stability of the network equipment are of the highest importance for us – and Waystream provides this.”

Image removed.

The network deploys Waystream MS4000 series switches and uses an automated control solution that Optisis have developed. This allows a high degree of automation in customer deployment and service activation, a key factor for the open access solution.

The nöGIG project lately received another push, when German Allianz insurance group invested around 300m Euro for a 74.9% stake in nöGIG. This amount will serve to fund the phase 2 roll-out, which is intended to add another 100,000 homes passed to the network.