Telecom Italia fibre for 84% of Italy by 2018
February 17, 2016
By Branislav Pekic in Rome
Telecom Italia (TIM) plans to increase NGN coverage by the end of 2018 and reach 84 per cent of the Italian population with fibre optics and 98 per cent with the LTE (4G) mobile network.
According to the 2016-2018 Three-Year Strategic Plan, approved by the Board of Directors of Telecom Italia, investments in Italy will be close to €12 billion, around €6.7 billion of which will be dedicated to NGN, LTE and other innovative technologies.
During this period, TIM plans to complete the transition from traditional Telco to Digital Telco & Platform, increasingly aimed at disseminating premium services and digital content within a customisable platform, accessible anywhere and on any device.
LTE customers should account for around 70 per cent of mobile broadband customers by 2018, thanks to almost blanket coverage at 75 Mbps, with peaks of 300 Mbps in the eight main cities thanks to the use of carrier aggregation technologies.
The total number of retail and wholesale fibre customers should reach 5 million in 2018, approximately 40 per cent of the total number of broadband customers. In particular, 20 per cent of the ultra-broadband coverage in 2018 will be achieved with FTTH technology.
Telecom Italia aims to offer premium services to customers via a single integrated platform, using its network infrastructure. By 2018, the number of ‘converged’ customers with high quality content is expected be around 1.5 million.