Further penetration with new investments of 50 million euros

Bulgarian telecommunications connectivity service provider Vestitel is strengthening its presence in the Greek market, with investments of 50 million euros over the next two years.

Vestitel has been operating since 2003 as a licensed telecommunications provider in Bulgaria and Greece, having built infrastructure with approximately 3,000 kilometers of network and Nx100G capacity, as well as over 40 points of presence, with which it serves the connectivity needs of businesses and organizations (telecommunications and others).

A key investment of Vestitel is the Balkans Digital Gateway, a project funded by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF Digital) program. The project aims to create a single, high-speed and highly secure network connecting four capitals of the Balkans: Sofia, Athens, Skopje and Bucharest.

As part of Phase 1 of the project, Vestitel Group signed a new grant agreement with the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) for a total of 10.1 million euros, aiming to strengthen digital infrastructure and connectivity in the region, as a follow-up to the Balkans Digital Gateway Study (Phase 0) project, which was also funded by HaDEA.

The Balkans Digital Gateway consists of three axes: the first includes the development of a new telecommunications network on the Burgas – Alexandroupolis and Serres – Orestiada routes, with a total length of 600 km. The second axis concerns the upgrade of the existing infrastructure connecting Sofia to Thessaloniki, with a length of 400 km, and the third the installation of an advanced DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technology system with a length of 5,600 km, connecting additional critical coastal areas in the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea.

Phase 2 of the project will start in 2027-2028 and foresees the development of a new submarine system connecting Thessaloniki to Athens. This system will offer highly reliable and high-capacity services to existing and new data centers in the Attica Region, while the new North-South digital corridor will connect the Mediterranean and the Balkans with the countries of the Scandinavian Peninsula via Romania, Ukraine and Poland.

At the same time, as stated during the company’s official presentation in Athens by Vestitel CEO Valentin Velichkov, the company is proceeding with the creation of a high-capacity point of presence (PoP) at Digital Realty’s facilities in Attica and the establishment of a local office in Athens, under its Greek subsidiary (Vestitel Hellas), which was founded in 2004.

The new PoP will offer a capacity of over 5 Tb/s to Vestitel’s customers in Greece and will ensure them privileged access to the most important Internet Exchanges and the largest international internet providers worldwide, with full backup solutions and the best possible latency in the region.

“Greece has been a key part of the company’s operations since the founding of Vestitel. Our goal is to expand our presence in the Greek market, broadening the range of services we provide to domestic businesses, beyond the telecommunications providers with which we already have extensive cooperation. Bulgaria and Greece are relatively small markets, each on its own. Only by creating a digital partnership between Sofia and Athens can we become visible on the digital map and play a significant role in Europe”, underlined Velichkov.

As a member of the Overgas Group – the largest private natural gas company in Bulgaria – Vestitel leverages the group’s know-how and ecosystem to expand its activity beyond classic telecommunications. The company provides IoT solutions, as well as applications for “smart” cities, and is one of the most dynamic LoRaWAN providers in Southeastern Europe, with coverage in more than 30 cities in Bulgaria and Greece.

This technology has enabled the development of integrated smart infrastructure solutions, with the most notable example being the largest Smart Gas project via LoRaWAN in Europe. Already, 80,000 smart gas meters have been installed, with the goal of reaching 500,000 by 2030.

In parallel with the Balkans Digital Gateway, Vestitel is going to develop in Greece its full portfolio of services, covering the areas of Smart Utilities, Smart Cities and Cloud, AI and Big Data solutions for the domestic business market.