United Group: How it will reach the Middle East via Greece

The geographical location of Greece, at the crossroads of three continents, and the specialized human resources, have recently made it an attractive regional interconnection hub for the transfer of data from Western Europe and the Mediterranean to the Middle East.

These two comparative advantages led UnitedGroup to establish its new company in our country, says the CEO of UGIWholesale, Mr. Paolo Ficini, speaking to the ot.gr.

“Greece’s choice was dictated by its important geographical location and its talent pool. Greece is on the main traffic route between Western Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East,” said the head of the new business unit, which will coordinate the wholesale telecommunications activities of the entire Group, covering data, roaming, and mobile telephony services, as well as and voice services.

UnitedGroup, which has recently invested in Greece, acquiring Forthnet, aims through its base in Greece to become a leader in the wholesale telecommunications market in the wider region.

This means, in short, that UGIWholesale is aimed at companies that want to transfer their data from Athens or Sofia, Bulgaria (also in the southeast corridor) to Western Europe.

“We are addressing all the major international players who are interested in operating in the region”, says the CEO of the new company, who is not new to the Greek market, as he joined the United Group from Telecom Italia Sparkle (Telecom Italia Group) , in which he had held CEO positions for subsidiaries in both Greece and Turkey.

UG has a fiber-optic network that spans a total of 41,000 km across Europe and has access to a total market of over 40 million people.

According to Mr. Ficini, it also owns state-of-the-art Data Centers in Serbia, Slovenia, and Bulgaria, which cater to all consumers, including corporations and providers. “In these three markets, our activity is quite successful and in fact in synergy with the other services we offer,” he characteristically stated, without revealing at this stage the Group’s plans for Greece.

An important “card” on which United Group is betting on for the development of this new unit is the extensive telecommunications network, which covers the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece.

In fact, the Group is going to invest more than 500 million euros over the next five years to bring new broadband services and 10Gbps speeds to more homes and businesses in Southeast Europe.

It recently announced that it will expand its network in partnership with Nokia. The design is already in progress, with Greece within this framework, but the details can not yet be announced.