Fastweb, a Swisscom subsidiary that provides fixed broadband and IPTV service in Italy announced 1Gbps offer on its Fiber to the Home network.
The service, already available in Milan, will be progressively extended in other 29 cities starting in 2017, said Fastweb. By 2020, it targets the footprint to cover 5 million households.
Fastweb has also decided to extend its ultra-broadband network to industrial districts and mid-size cities, so to cover 8 million households and businesses by 2020 with its Fiber to the Cabinet network, reaching download speeds up to 200 Mbps.
By 2020, Fastweb said its ultra broadband network (FTTH and FTTC) will altogether be available to 13 million households and businesses (approx. 50% of the population) vs the existing 7.5 million at the end of 2016 (30% of the national coverage).
Fastweb will launch in January the new FastGate router, which will allow 1Gbps broadband to consumers and businesses. The operator also plans to leverage the technology as backhaul for the deployment of a 5G ready network based on small cells.
Fastweb claims that it was the first operator to launch Fiber to the Home technology in Italy back in 2000, the first to launch 100 Mbps in 2010 and the first in Europe to launch 200 Mbps with Vplus technology in 2016.
Along with the wireline network, Fastweb continues to develop also WOW FI, the shared Wi-Fi based on the customer’s community. To date, approx. 1.5 million customers have been enabled to utilise the service, included in the home subscription, in over 800 municipalities.
Fastweb plans to offer its customers increasingly convergent services, extending the high quality of its wireline network to the mobile environment. To this end, on top of launching 4G and 4Gplus services thanks to the agreement with TIM, Fastweb will deploy a 5G-ready mobile network based on small cells.
Fastweb is also a full MVNO operator and from January it plans to offer its customers 4G and 4Gplus service.
Alberto Calcagno, Chief Executive Officer of Fastweb
The 5G is based on a hybrid fixed/mobile infrastructure and Fastweb is the operator which has the necessary three ingredients to quickly develop the new network: the fiber, over 20 thousand cabinets that will become 50 thousand in 2020 which are already prepared to host the small cells, and the 3.5 Ghz frequencies.
