Ventizz investment Conlinet installs and operates municipal glass-fiber network together with Stadtwerke Bochum
June 09, 2010
The Conlinet Group, acquired by Ventizz Capital Fund IV in March 2010, is continuing to expand: Together with Stadtwerke Bochum (Bochum’s utilities company), the Conlinet subsidiary Vitronet Beteiligungen GmbH has formed two joint ventures to install and operate a glass-fiber network in Bochum. The first new company, Glasfaser Bochum GmbH & Co. KG, will successively expand the fiber optic infrastructure in the Bochum city region. A second joint venture, bestmile GmbH & Co. KG will market and sell the resulting glass-fiber network.
This agreement with Stadtwerke Bochum is already the second large contract concluded by the Conlinet Group in the space of just a few months. Conlinet has had a strategic alliance with Stadtwerke Essen since 2009, and the joint venture essen.net GmbH was formed in December.
"We are very pleased with Conlinet’s development over the past few months. Demand for the company’s infrastructure solutions is high, and we believe that Conlinet will continue to enjoy very promising growth. The projects we have successfully launched in Essen and now also in Bochum provide excellent foundations in this regard,” commented Willi Mannheims, a board member and partner with Ventizz Capital Partners Advisory AG, which exclusively advises the Ventizz funds.
The project is scheduled to start this summer. “We are aiming for the groundbreaking ceremony for the project’s first region in Altenbochum on July 1, 2010” commented Conlinet’s managing director Harald Ross. Around 60% of the Bochum city region is to be equipped with the high-speed network by 2016. Ross added: “Then it will be possible for households in Bochum to enjoy 50-times faster network access than is currently possible with DSL connections. That means that Internet connections of 100,000 kbit/s will be no problem at all for users located in Bochum.”
The high quantity of data transferred using glass-fiber means that services that use enormous amounts of bandwidth can be offered in parallel. This will allow standard services such as telephony, Internet and TV to be transferred simultaneously using the glass-fiber network in future. The glass-fiber network also offers new services such as Internet or 3D-TV, online shopping, e-learning and video conferences the opportunity of gaining a foothold in private homes and SMEs.
“During the coming weeks, our objective is to vitalize the newly formed companies and enter into the detailed planning stage together with the civil engineering authority,” commented Bernd Wilmert, Managing Director of Stadtwerke Bochum. “Even though it still sounds very futuristic, it’s not going to take long to become reality in Bochum,” added Stadtwerke Bochum’s other Managing Director Dietmar Spohn.
Company profile
The Essen-based conlinet Group is a market-leading full-service provider of turnkey glass-fiber infrastructure solutions and operates independently of a specific group. In addition, conlinet also operates its own glass fiber networks and maintains and services more than 15,000 kilometers of glass fiber network cable. Its customers include energy supply companies, municipal utilities companies, cable network operators and carriers.
The conlinet Group itself has held participating interests in network companies via its subsidiary Vitronet Beteiligungen GmbH since the beginning of 2010.
On the Internet at: www.conlinet.de
Ventizz Capital Partners was formed in 2000 and has offices in St. Gallen and Düsseldorf. Ventizz Capital Partners exclusively advises the Ventizz private equity funds that offer equity capital for the growth of high-tech companies in the German-speaking region. The four Partners of Ventizz advise together with a team of 15 professionals currently four funds with capital under management totaling EUR 675 million. Ventizz Capital Fund IV L.P. is the largest of the four funds set up to date. After six months of fund-raising, this fund was closed at the end of 2007 with a volume of EUR 450 million and is thus one of the largest private equity funds for venture capital and medium-sized tech buy outs in the German-speaking region.
To date, Ventizz funds have invested in 33 companies focusing on renewable energy, medical technology, information and communication technology and on other industries offering high value-add. In addition to a large number of trade sales, Ventizz has successfully taken three of its portfolio companies public (ersol, SAF, PV Crystalox Solar).
|
