LISBON, May 16 (Reuters) - Vodafone will double thesize of its fibre optic network in Portugal to cover 1 millionhomes by 2015, it said on Thursday, as it seeks to moreeffectively compete against Portugal Telecom and thesoon-to-be-merged duo of Zon and Sonaecom.
The move comes as Vodafone looks to offer bundled Internet,pay-TV, mobile and fixed telephone services by expanding itsfibre network beyond the greater Lisbon and Porto regions.
"We are expanding as we speak to go from 500,000 homes nowto one million in two years" a spokeswoman told Reuters, withoutgiving details on how much it will cost.
Portugal Telecom's network already reaches 1.6 million homesand it plans to add another million by 2015 with an investmentof 150 million euros.
Despite Portugal's steep recession and record unemployment,the numbers of subscribers of service packages that includeInternet and pay-TV have been growing.
Vodafone lags fourth in Portugal's pay-TV operators rankingbut is the country's second-largest mobile services operator,with seven million clients.
The UK-based company also announced on Thursday that it hadreached a deal in Germany with Deutsche Telekom thatwill enable it to offer its German customers TV over superfastbroadband.