CETIN a.s., (also known as Česká telekomunikační infrastruktura, its former name[1]) is a Czech telecommunications company that is part of PPF Group, an international investment group formerly majority-owned by Czech billionaire Petr Kellner. The company was created as a result of the separation of O2 Czech Republic a.s. into two companies, following a decision taken at O2 Czech Republic’s general meeting on 28 April 2015. The actual separation took place on 1 June 2015.[2] CETIN, the new company created alongside O2, now runs the fixed-line access network, the mobile access network and international telecommunication services that were previously run by the combined O2 Czech Republic.[3]
The CETIN network takes in 65,000 km of optical cables and 20,000,000 km of metallic cable pairs throughout the Czech Republic. It covers 99.6% of the population with a mixture of GSM, UMTS, LTE and 5G mobile technology by 6,000 base stations, and SDH, WDM, Ethernet and IP technology at fixed locations.[4] On an international level, CETIN owns PoP (Points of Presence) in London, Vienna, Bratislava, Frankfurt and Hongkong.[5]
CETIN is continuously accelerating existing metallic networks through bonding and vectoring technologies. In addition, the company is also engaged in the construction of new fiber-optic connections to the fiber-optic network. The goal is to reach one million connections at 1 Gbps by 2026.[6]
PPF Group decided to squeeze out CETIN’s remaining minority shareholders at CETIN’s general meeting on 3 December 2015.[7] The shares owned by these minority shareholders therefore passed to the majority shareholder. As a result, in January 2016, PPF Group completed the acquisition of 100% of the share capital of CETIN.[8][9]
CETIN became the general partner of the Prague Spring (Pražské jaro) music festival in 2016. The company introduced a new feature to the 71st year of the festival in cooperation with Prague Spring – streaming the opening concert online to locations at Kampa Park in Prague and also to eight cinemas in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.[10][11]
In July 2020, the infrastructure and retail parts of the three Telenor-branded operators in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Serbia were separated and to form the CETIN Group, a wholesale operator and provider of active and passive telecommunications infrastructure services in the Central and Eastern Europe.[12]
In November 2020, CETIN signed a five-year cooperation contract to build a 5G mobile network with the Swedish company Ericsson, which will upgrade more than 4,000 base stations across CETIN's mobile network through Ericsson Radio System for 5G Standalone (SA) and 5G Non-Standalone (NSA).[13]
In October 2021, Czech investment group PPF agreed to sell a 30% stake in telecommunications infrastructure group CETIN to Singapore GIC investment fund.[14]
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