A press conference was held today in the auditorium of Palazzo Tursi, in the presence of Marco Bucci, Mayor of Genoa, Elisa Serafini, Local Marketing City Councillor and Alberto Calcagno, CEO of Fastweb, to present the plan of a partnership between the TLC provider and the Municipality of Genoa aimed at expanding in the city the coverage of the Fastweb Wi-Fi platform through the installation of external accesspoints in the city's public spaces.
The initiative represents the most vital part of an infrastructure plan that seeks to boost the local digital development of the territory thus confirming both the Ligurian city's commitment to become a "smart city" model and the commitment of Fastweb, as an operator that has historically been in the front-line of the most modern communication technologies.
The execution of the new infrastructure will allow, first of all, to increase, in Genoa, the coverage of the WOW-FI service, the sharing Wi-Fi service which enables almost 100,000 Fastweb land-line and cell phone customers to freely surf the Web by automatically access, with their devices, the 36 thousand accesspoints made available to date to the members of the Community and the 600 external access points forecast in the plan that was announced today.
The installation of the 600 external accesspoints, completed also thanks to the partnership with the municipality, will expand even further the coverage of the Fastweb wireless platform and will represent a key enabler for important testing activities related to the Internet of Things and to a Smart City services (for example, the dissemination of information related to traffic and meteorology, the efficient management and collection of waste and the implementation of shared cars and bicycle services for public mobility, the monitoring of the environment, the control of traffic, etc.).
The installation of 230 accesspoints of the latest generation is planned for the first few months of the year, and they will be added to the 220 accesspoints already installed in the most visited areas of the city (Lagaccio; Nervi; Pra; Quarto dei mille; Quezzi; San Fructose; Sestri Ponente; Struppa; Manin/marassi; S. Gottardo/Marassi; S. Quirico/Bolzaneto; Palmaro/Voltri; Teglia/Bolzaneto; Castelletto). The possibility made available by the municipality to use public infrastructures will entail the installation of additional 150 accesspoints, primarily in the downtown area (Foce; Sampierdarena; Carignano; Centro; Albaro). Each of these outdoor single antennas of the latest generation have a coverage of about 5,000 square meters.
Fastweb will share with the Municipality the results of experiences already built in other locations, as well as its skills and knowledge, also for the definition, for example, of an analytic platform for the development of added value services within the big data area.
In addition during the press conference, an in-depth video of Genoa, shot at 360°, was shown, a gift from Fastweb to the municipal administration.
"The municipal administration – said Marco Bucci, Genoa mayor – strongly believes in the platform launched by Fastweb as capable of supporting smart city services by means of practically limitless applications. We would like Genoa to become a smart city, an intelligent city that is increasingly attractive to new investors and to new business opportunities. To achieve this it is necessary that the municipality believes in this objective and ensures that the Genoa population believes in it as well. The future of our city will be naturally based on these types of infrastructures which are fundamental in order to communicate in the fastest and most efficient manner".
"The history that has connected Fastweb with Genoa since 2001 has always been rich of innovations and future opportunities. Thanks to the fiber infrastructure provided by Fastweb in recent years - 2,200 km of fiber optic cables used in the city - and the Wi-Fi project, Genoa can potentially become a leading digital ecosystem city and play a key role in the 5G development" declared Alberto Calcagno, CEO of Fastweb. "With the expanded Wi-Fi connectivity that we are implementing, we are providing to our customers a service of excellence and we are laying down the basis for future smart city and Internet of Things projects that the city of Genoa will be involved in testing. We are making available our advanced connectivity services and our knowledge to the population and to companies in order to accelerate productivity, revolutionise the way to interact with the Public Administration, to improve urban life and create new opportunities for this extraordinary city".
In fact Genoa is one of the 7 Fastweb "historical" cities where the company started to carry out, in the early 2000, activities aimed at the execution of its futuristic network, by providing high speed connectivity to the Internet which was never achieved before.
In 2017, the 1 Gigabit Ultrafiber service was launched and it is now available to more than 180,000 households, more than 50% of the total city, that are connected with the Fastweb "Fiber-to-the-home" network, which was recently upgraded, and with the network being currently developed by FlashFiber, the joint venture established with TIM in order to bring FTTH to 29 cities. Additional households, i.e. more than 15% of the total, are currently connected instead through the infrastructure "fiber-to-the-cabinet" (FTTC), with a performance of up to 100 Megabit per second in downloads, bringing the total number of households covered by ultra-broadband to 65% of the city. By the end of 2018, the household units for which the final leg from the cabinet to the home will be implemented – and that will be enabled to receive the 1 Gigabit Ultrafiber service – will cover 65% of the city.
To date, Fastweb has invested approximately 120 million Euro in Genoa for the development of a landline network of excellence which is moving ahead also thanks to the collaboration with Flash Fiber, the joint venture with Tim. Finally, Fastweb has activated important partnerships over the years - e.g. with Salone Nautico (Nautical Tradeshow) and the Genoa Aquarium - in order to provide its connectivity to the most important local tradeshows.