(Bloomberg) -- Liberty Global Plc has signed a deal to build residential electric vehicle chargers amid broader plans to use its British business as the backbone for so-called smart city technology.
The company, controlled by U.S. billionaire John Malone, has created a fifty-fifty joint venture called Liberty Charge alongside private equity firm Zouk Capital, which manages the U.K. government's 400 million-pound ($489 million) Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund, half of which will be funded by the government.
London-based Liberty Global is looking at how it could deploy fast communications to support charging networks, and has asked for planning powers which point to more sophisticated technology. Its telecom assets could form the backbone for wireless services and “smart-city internet of things” applications like monitoring and managing parking and pollution, and “data-offload from vehicles,” according to filings by British media regulator Ofcom on Monday.
The new venture will support Liberty's Virgin Media Park and Charge project, which plans to use its 40,000 electrical-powered broadband street cabinets and 170,000 kilometers (106,000 miles) of underground ducts to deploy 1,200 charging sockets by early 2021. The new partnership is not limited to where Virgin Media has local connection points, said a Liberty Global spokesman. The creation of Liberty Charge was first reported by the Financial Times on Wednesday.
“This investment from Zouk re-enforces our belief that there is significant value in leveraging Virgin Media's wide-ranging infrastructure and connectivity capabilities into new and fast growing sectors such as e-mobility and energy,” said Liberty Global's vice president of global energy and utilities Jason Simpson in a statement.
The Church of England also supported the Zouk-managed charging infrastructure investment fund's 80 million pound fundraise last month, through the Church Commissioners 8.3 billion pound investment fund. And it's not the first time its bishops have dabbled with telecom companies: In 2018 clerics agreed to host mobile wireless equipment on British church spires.
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