News
Italian operator to start new phase of fibre development in small and medium-sized municipalities next week.
Fastweb on Wednesday shared details of its new plan for rolling out fibre, indicating that it aims to reach 13 million homes and businesses by 2020.
Under its current four-year plan, the operator’s fibre network coverage will reach 7.5 million households, that is 30% of the Italian population, by the end of this year.
It aims to almost double that number, extending fibre to 500 cities, providing speeds of up to 200 Mbps. 1 million homes will have 200-Mbps broadband by the end of 2016, Fastweb said.
"We will start in the small and medium municipalities as we don’t want a two-speed Italy," the telco said, in a statement.
This new phase of fibre network rollout will begin on 11 April. The first towns targeted will be Arezzo, Viterbo, Riccione, Rimini, Trento, Massa, Pistoia and Caserta, with more to follow in the coming months.
The telco said it will connect medium-sized cities of up 100,000 inhabitants with eVDSL technology, which provides speeds of up to 200 Mbps. We understand this to mean it will use what the ITU terms VDSL2 35b, which extends the frequency range to 35 MHz, as opposed to 17 MHz for standard VDSL2 and thereby offers greater speeds.
It will also upgrade speeds in the medium and large cities already connected to its fibre network under the previous plan, starting with Rome and Milan.
It has earmarked investment of €2 billion for the project, including €500 million for the network upgrade element.
"The plan launched today by Fastweb brings fibre to the street cabinets that connect millions of houses not reached by ultra broadband fibre network until today," said Fastweb CEO Alberto Calcagno.
"This plan is preparatory to the set up of fibre last mile that will be realized by Enel, Metroweb or TIM," he added.
Fastweb claims to be Italy’s market leader when it comes to ultra-broadband services. It has 650,000 customers, which it says equates to around half of the market.
