First phase of the project kicks off in Rome with Fastweb's customers connected by access gateways from Pirelli Broadband Solutions
Pirelli Broadband Solutions, a leading supplier of Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) for the connected home and office, today announced that it has been chosen by Fastweb as technology partner for the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) deployment at the Collina Fleming residential district in Rome. The deployment is part of the new nationwide Next Generation Access Network (NGAN) project promoted by italian telecoms operators Fastweb, Vodafone and Wind.
Pirelli Broadband Solutions will supply Fastweb with its new generation FTTH access gateways, designed to exploit the benefits of ultra-broadband connectivity by supporting high performance WiFi, high quality VoIP telephony, and high throughput connectivity for end user's multimedia devices.
The deployment in Rome is the first phase of the project initiative named "Fiber for Italy" promoted by Fastweb, Vodafone and Wind to provide ultra-broadband connectivity with speeds up to 100 Megabit per second for residential users and up to 1 Gigabit per second for enterprise customers thanks to a Point-to-Point network architecture that dedicates an optical fiber to connect each customer to the Central Office.
The new network will not only support Internet connectivity at very high speed, but will also enable applications such as e-government, tele-work, tele-medicine, tele-conference and high definition video transmission.
The project plans to progressively cover the 15 main italian cities, for an equivalent population of 10 million people.
Since 2001, Pirelli Broadband Solutions has been a technology partner of Fastweb, supplying triple play access gateways with both FTTH and xDSL interface.
With its new generation of access gateways, and with its new EpicentroTM software suite, Pirelli Broadband Solutions provides an open platform to support value added applications (such as wellness, security, energy management) that can be added over time through contributions from third parties' developers and specialized service providers.
With 1.7 million customers, Fastweb is one of the main italian telecoms service providers. The company operates in over 150 metropolitan areas through a nationwide fiber optic network with an extension of over 31,000 km. Fastweb has been the first operator in the world to pursue a technological approach which combines the extensive use of the IP protocol for voice, data and video transmission, with the use of both fiber optics and xDSL access infrastructures.
For residential users, Fastweb offers a wide range of services integrated over a single household connection, comprising fixed and mobile telephony, fast Internet access and IPTV.
For business users, Fastweb offers advanced and competitive services for all the market segments: public administration, small offices, professionals, small and medium enterprises, large corporations, universities and research centers.
Fastweb has been listed at the Milan Stock Exchange since March 2000 and is controlled by Swisscom with a share of 82%.
"We are proud to have been selected as a technology partner of this ground-breaking project. It is one further recognition to Pirelli Broadband Solution's long term expertise in the FTTH service deployments at international level" said Francesco Schiavinato, Chief Operating Officer, Pirelli Broadband Solutions.
"Fiber for Italy is a very innovative project, a nationwide point-to-point network that will bring unprecedented bandwidth to households and enterprises while allowing competition among service providers in the interest of all users. To implement such an innovative project, it is important for us to be supported by a reliable partner such as Pirelli Broadband Solutions" said Mario Mella, Chief Technology Officer, Fastweb.