According to data published by Italy’s Communications Authority (AgCom), the number of DSL lines dropped by 210,000, to a total of 12.95 million. Broadband accesses that use other technologies increased by 660,000 units on an annual basis and by 1.3 million when considering the entire period.

Market leader Telecom Italia has seen its share drop by 1.3 percentage points on an annual basis to 47.5 per cent. Wind has 15.3 per cent of the market (-0.2%), followed by Fastweb with 14.7 per cent (+0.7%), Vodafone with 12.7 per cent (+0.5%), Tiscali with 3.2 per cent (-0.3%) and others with the remaining 6.6 per cent (+0.6%).

Next generation broadband lines (NGA) surpassed 1 million units in June, registering a growth of 296,000 units in H1 2015. NGA accesses now account for 5 per cent of overall lines and 7.3 per cent of broadband lines. Fastweb and Telecom Italia, jointly, account for 90 per cent of NGA lines.Meanwhile, Italy’s Ministry of Economic Development has published the results of a public consultation conducted in May by Infratel on the “Italian Ultra Broadband Strategy” and related to Ultrawide Bandwidth available connectivity offered by telecommunications operators.

According to the results, on March 31st 2015 broadband coverage was not available to 71.38 per cent of Italian municipalities, 26.40 per cent had Fibre to the Node (FTTN), while the remaining 10.06 per cent had Fiber to the Home (FTTH), Fiber to the Building (FTTB) or Fibre to the Distribution Point (FTTDP) architecture.

In regards to regional level coverage forecast in 2018 by private operators, FTTN will account for 41.16 per cent, while FTTH, FTTB and FTTDP coverage will account for 21.42 per cent.