TIM and Eolo team up to bring FWA to Italian ‘white areas’

Earlier this year, the Italian government announced Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) to use around €6.68 billion to support a variety of national industries and institutions in the wake of the devastating coronavirus pandemic.

 

A major focus throughout this plan is digitalisation, with the government also announcing its ‘Italia a 1 Giga’ plan in tandem, aiming to cover all of Italy with ultrabroadband connectivity by 2026, whether via 5G, fibre technologies, or FWA.

 

Now, to meet these demands in Italy’s ‘white areas’, which currently have no broadband access, TIM is announcing a new MoU with FWA specialist Eolo. The deal will see Eolo provide TIM with wholesale access to its FWA network, which currently spans over 6,500 municipalities and 79% of homes in rural or low-density areas. 

 

The two operators will work together to conduct a trial by the end of October to analyse the specific requirements of offering Eolo’s wholesale services over TIM’s network.

 

“The understanding, in addition to confirming our commitment and desire to become the driving force in the country’s digitisation process, will also enable us to start testing, as a consortium, new ways of accessing FWA services, improving our capacity to contribute to the objectives of the ‘Italia a 1 Giga’ plan which is part of the government’s strategy in the deployment of Ultrabroadband,” explained TIM’s CEO, Luigi Gubitosi.

 

FWA is becoming an increasingly important option for telecoms operators for delivering connectivity in areas where deploying fibre is unfeasible. Relatively cheap and simple to deploy, relatively recent advances of FWA technology mean that the service can now provide almost fibre-like experiences, making it an ideal choice for rural deployment. 

 

TIM is not the only major operator exploring the use of this technology in Italy, with Vodafone announcing that it had reached 5,000 localities with the technology earlier in May this year.