OTE starts Greece's first fiber-to-the-home for ultra-fast broadband

Greece's biggest telecom operator OTE Group flicked the switch on the first "fiber-to-the-home" ultra-fast internet connection on Tuesday, which will help the country make a leap to faster speeds within the next four years.

Greece, which is slowly recovering from a protracted recession and exits its third international bailout in August, needs new generation infrastructure to digitalize its economy and help boost growth and tackle unemployment, the highest in eurozone.

Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH), which provides a direct fiber optic connection to the user's premises, is now below 1 percent in the country.

OTE's new technology aims to bring that rate up to about 25 percent by 2022, upgrading internet speeds to up to 1 Gbps (Gigabit per second), which is about five times faster than up to 200 Mbps (Megabits per second) currently on offer.

OTE has spent some 2...