#PalermoDigitale
Today, during a press conference given at the Palazzo delle Aquile building, attended by Leoluca Orlando, the city mayor, and Sergio Scalpelli, Head of External and Institutional Relations at Fastweb, the City of Palermo and Fastweb presented a scheme made up of three training courses for the development of specialised digital skills, organised by Fastweb Digital Academy, the new school for the digital professions based in Milan and created together with the Cariplo Foundation within the framework of Cariplo Factory. The courses will be held from 6 to 9 November at Consorzio Arca. During the press conference, the launch, from November, of UltraFibra, was announced, the Fastweb service that allows the achievement of Internet connection speeds of up to 1 Gigabit in download and up to 200 Megabits in upload, an authentic key enabler of innovative services for the city's inhabitants.
The project for the development of digital skills, organised by Fastweb Digital Academy for the first time outside of Milan, constitutes the central theme of a plan that intends to make Palermo a laboratory for innovation in terms of both infrastructure and services and including the spreading of digital culture, confirming a relationship that is now well established between Fastweb and the public authorities for the area.
In a country like Italy, where the demand for digital skills is growing, Fastweb Digital Academy, created with an aim to spread digital culture and speed up the entry of young people into the job market, has come to Palermo precisely for the purpose of supporting the Sicilian capital in its path towards full digital transformation, investing with passion and commitment in a project that aims to bring the young inhabitants of Palermo into the new world of the digital professions.
From Monday 6 to Thursday 9 November, at Consorzio ARCA (viale delle Scienze, Edificio 16), three free specialist training courses will be given, targeting adults aged between 20 and 40 that pass the recruitment process: Personal Branding (6-7 November, 16 hours); Digital Marketing Fundamentals (8-9 November, 16 hours) and Java Fundamentals (6-9 November, 32 hours). At the end of each course, students who complete the course and sit a final test will be issued a certificate. For information on the courses, the Academy initiatives and methods of enrolment, please consult the website: https://www.fastwebdigital.academy
"Our partnership with Fastweb unites material innovation and cultural innovation, technological capital and human capital", declared the mayor of the city of Palermo Leoluca Orlando and Councillor for Culture, Andrea Cusumano. "Training in digital subjects and advanced communications is an increasingly strategic element in any path to personal growth but also in building community. Together with the development of infrastructure and its technological offering with new fast connectivity services, Fastweb is therefore contributing to increasing the potential of Palermo in terms of new services for its inhabitants and attractiveness for new business investments".
"We are proud to export the Fastweb Digital Academy experience to Palermo, which has been highly receptive and since it was founded, more than a year ago, it has successfully met the challenge of innovation becoming a genuine example of how, by spreading digital culture and skills, it is possible to trigger the digital transformation process of the territory", declared Sergio Scalpelli, Head of External and Corporate Relations at Fastweb. " We want to support the local government on the path to change and innovation undertaken, which, partly owing to Fastweb's recent investments in infrastructure targeting the equipping of the area with an ultra-fast fibre optic network, will allow the relaunch of the economy, boost its potential to a maximum and make the most of the historical and cultural heritage of this wonderful city".
Within the press conference, Fastweb also announced the launch in Palermo, as of the beginning of November, of the 1 Giga UltraFibra service, which, by the end of the year, will allow 110,000 homes and businesses - more than 31% of companies and households - use of the service to use the Internet with a speed of up to 1 Gigabit in download and 200 Megabits in upload, with the "Fibre-to-the-home" network, currently being implemented by FlashFiber, the joint venture created with TIM to bring FTTH connections to 29 cities.
Additional households, 10% of the total, are currently connected through the infrastructure "Fibre-to-the-cabinet" (FTTC), with a performance up to 100 Megabits per second in download, bringing the total number of households covered by ultra-broadband service, by the end of 2017, to more than 40% of the city. By the end of 2018, the units enabled for the 1 Gigabit Ultra-fibre service will cover more than 50% of the city.
With a speed up to 10 ten times greater than the current one and the low latency values, the UltraFibra service will allow the inhabitants of Palermo to use the network in ways never experienced before: to work and share information, use and create Internet services on the Internet, connect new smart-home devices, learn and for entertainment too. With the switch to the 1 Giga service, the WoW-FI service, which allows all Fastweb customers to use the Internet free of charge thanks to 25,000 active hot-spots around the city of Palermo, it is becoming even higher performance and more functional, creating an increasingly smart and hyper-connected city.
The cooperation between Fastweb and the City of Palermo began in 2005, when the company decided to develop its new generation network in the city, connecting households, small and medium enterprises, large corporations and public administration by optical fibre and equipping Palermo with latest generation digital infrastructure. In 2014, a technologically advanced and secure Wi-Fi network was created for the City of Palermo, which guarantees coverage of the main squares in the city and free access to all inhabitants. Subsequently, over the course of 2015, a video surveillance platform was completed, in turn integrated with the City Authority's radio network and managed by Fastweb, which covers various crucial points and all the school buildings in the city. The Company also provides super-fast connections to the Internet as well as latest generation telecommunication services to corporate offices and to the municipal and regional administration offices.