(Telecompaper) Vodafone and Orange have agreed to partner on rolling out fibre broadband services in Spain. The cooperation targets covering 6 million homes and businesses in 50 major cities by September 2017. Under the terms of the agreement, Vodafone and Orange will each deploy street-level fibre (horizontal infrastructure) in complementary geographies. The fibre will be owned independently but will share the same technical specifications to ensure compatibility as a single network, and each partner will have guaranteed access to the whole infrastructure. The companies will also each deploy their own in-building fibre (vertical infrastructure), guaranteeing access to each other, and will together request access to any third-party vertical infrastructure. The commercial service is expected to launch in January 2014, with an initial 800,000 homes covered by March of that year. Coverage will gradually expand to 3 million homes and businesses by September 2015 and 6 million by 2017, giving a residential penetration of around 40 percent. Capital expenditure to meet the coverage target is estimated at EUR 1 billion. The operators said the agreement is also open to third parties willing to co-invest, and they will discuss with the regulator commitments to ensure equal access.