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Italian incumbent talks up small-scale ultrafast broadband rollout as network competition heats up.
In a further sign that competition is intensifying in the Italian broadband market, Telecom Italia on Wednesday announced that it is rolling out a 1-Gbps service to a limited number of dwellings in Perugia.
The Italian incumbent, which operates under the TIM brand, said it has connected 200 buildings to its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network and will make 1-Gbps services available to consumers and businesses from Friday.
It has spent €10 million on the Perugia rollout, which forms part of its national FTTH plan, through which it aims to reach 3.5 million homes by 2018.
Perugia is also among the first five cities covered under electricity utility Enel’s plan to roll out a rival fibre network in Italy.
Earlier this year Enel revealed that it will spend €2.5 billion rolling out a wholesale fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network in 224 Italian towns and cities, and last month it named the first to be connected.
Phase one will see infrastructure deployed in 10 cities, the first five being Perugia, Cagliari, Bari, Venice and Catania, starting around the middle of May. The others are Florence, Genoa, Naples, Padua and Palermo, with the rollout beginning in the autumn.
Telecom Italia is clearly keen to be seen getting to market first in Perugia.
"Perugia is one of the very first Italian cities to have a new generation ultrabroadband network with fibre that comes right inside the buildings enabling transmission speeds of up to 1000 MB [sic]," TIM’s head of open access Carlo Filangieri said, in a statement.
"We are the first company to make this type of infrastructure operative in Italy, in the Umbrian capital, making it immediately available to a significant number of citizens, businesses and other operators, and we are proud of this result," he added.
