Telecoms: Italy

The IEC will bring together in Milan key ICT players from around the world to present cutting-edge information on next-generation networks and architectures expanding the focus of the program to include network convergence and IMS development and applications.

While MVNO are still lacking in Italy, an Italian company launched a worldwide MVNO service based on call-back technology.

Effective today, all Italian mobile network operators dropped the 'recharge fee' used to be applied to pre-paid customers every time they bought credit, as mandated by a recent Government decree supporting consumer advocates.

The controlling stake of Italian operator Elitel Telecom (AIM:ETM) has been sold by investment fund Kiwi II to another Italian small OLO: Vive La Vie.

After being banned to charge an extra fee for every recharge operation by pre-paid customers, Italian mobile network operators risk losing also the lucrative “per call” fee they charge as soon as a call is established.

Revenues for Telecom Italia group in FY 2006 reached € 31,275 m, with an organic growth of 2.9%. EBIDTA was € 12,850 m, with an organic growth of 0.8%.

Swisscom expressed its intention to acquire, through a public tender offer, the shares representing the entire capital stock of Fastweb at a price of € 47 per share.

According to what Telecom Italia told earlier this week to the financial community, the customer portfolio for international operations would in 2009 account for around 48% of the entire Group and revenues from international operations would grow from the current 16% (approx.) of the total revenues to 30% (approx.) in 2009.

According to a recent research by ANIE, Italian households do embrace more and more technology, but they are really still in love only with their mobile phones.

Tiscali confirmed it is planning to launch an IPTV service in Italy next quarter.

Pirelli Broadband Solutions, will launch its new range of dual-mode GSM-WiFi handsets at the C5 World Forum next week.

Schmid Telecom has been selected by Telecom Italia and wins another delivery contract for Watson TDM (G.SHDSL) modems, to be installed all over Italy.

Italtel's revenue for 2006 totalled € 546.1 m, in line with € 545.8 m in 2005; Ebitda amounted to € 114.8 m corresponding to 21% of revenue.

A few more details have recently been disclosed by Telecom Italia about its NGN2 (next generation network) investments.

The Italian Post Office (Poste Italiane) announced today its plan to become a mobile virtual network operator.

A live demo of the NGN2 project announced by Telecom Italia has been unveiled at the C5 World Forum in Milan. The demo illustrates the bandwidth potential of fibre-based network access infrastructure, capable of speed up to 50 Mbit/s over a FTTB-VDSL2 architecture.

At last a MVNO in Italy. As expected, the retail giant COOP became Italy’s first virtual mobile carrier, which is launching a range of services marketed under the ‘COOPVoce’ brand.