Telecoms: Italy

Italtel will soon be floated on the Milan Stock Exchange. This company is the only survived Italian ‘national champion’ in the telecom equipment sector. Its roots date back to the year 1921 and the company has historically been one of the key supplier of the incumbent Telecom Italia, which still owns about 20% of it.
The Milan-based company survived several ‘revolutions’ and reinvented himself more than once, it is focusing now on softswitches for Next Generation Networks.

Italian engineering company Sielte bought the local “Build and Service Engineering” division from Siemens. Sielte is one of the main Italian contractor that designs, deploys, installs and test mobile radio sites. Thanks to this acquisition, Sielte will add 80 people to its workforce.

Italian nano-PC specialist Eurotech unveiled ‘Zypad’, a wrist-worn PC that weighs just 290 grams.

M2M specialist Telit Communications, headquartered in Trieste, is to open a new research center in Sardinia. The new site is co-financed by the Italian State that granted the company €11.4 million and a €14.1 million loan facility.

Italian IP technology will help to better manage the interconnection between the French and British power grids.

Utilities network’s specialist Selta won a half a million € contract from RTE to design an advanced substations automation and remote control system based on IP communications

Pirelli Broadband Solutions is supplying dual-mode GSM/Wi-Fi handsets to German operator Arcor (part of Vodafone group) and French operator Free (part of Iliad group).

By the end of the month, Vodafone Italia will sell a new UMTS handset with its own brand, with no reference at all to the manufacturer of the phone.
Actually, the new VF710 phone has been designed to Vodafone specification and manufactured by Huawei Technologies in China.

Italtel announced that has reached an agreement with Greek alternative operator Tellas to supply a Next Generation Network (NGN) for innovative Voice and IP services and the deployment of a Metro Ethernet Network.

STMicroelectronics inaugurated a new MEMS production line in Milan that will boost its capacity to deliver its state-of-art sensors targeted to consumer applications, including next-generation mobile handsets.

The Nigerian national power utility chose Italian specialist Selta to design and deploy an high tech nationwide telecom network exploiting the high voltage power line grid.

Fastweb has chosen to enhance its national network with the Cisco Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture. This upgrade, implemented by Italtel, a Cisco strategic alliance partner, will expand Fastweb's national network capacity and enhance quality-of-service (QoS) capabilities in order to support the rising demand for standard- and high-definition video services and the continuing growth of its consumer and business customer base.

Nokia and Wind have signed a three-year frame agreement for the turnkey supply of Nokia's WCDMA 3G radio network solution in 9 out of the 20 regions in Italy, including Nokia Flexi WCDMA Base Station, Nokia NetAct and a range of managed services.

Italian State owned broadcaster RAI said it is co-operating with Cisco to design a new mixed-mode DVT-T and IPTV set top box.

Milan-based Quantum showcase today at the 3 GSM World Congress the Pocket TV QTM 1000 personal DVB-H receiver chosen by 3 Italia for its Digital Mobile TV service.

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.

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.

Former CEO of Telecom Italia and of Eni, Franco Bernabè took a controlling stake of mobile M2M specialist Telit through a consortium of investors named Boostt.

Huawei has been selected by Telecom Italia to expand and upgrade its HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) networks covering Southern Italy,

Pirelli Broadband Solutions introduced its stylish Discus DSBG Series, a new line of business-class routers.

NGI has deployed its Alvarion's BreezeACCESS®VL and BreezeNET B to offer high speed broadband wireless services in Northern Italy.

Pirelli announced the founding of a new company as a result of integration between the photonics business unit of Pirelli Broadband Solutions and the Optical Innovation division of Pirelli Labs.

Alcatel-Lucent has been selected by ICE - Italian Trade Commission (Istituto nazionale per il Commercio Estero), to deploy an international VoIP network connecting more than 80 sites worldwide.

At FTTH Council Europe to be held in Paris on February 27th & 28th, Prysmian Cables & Systems will be exhibiting the latest additions to its growing FTTH product portfolio including VertiCasa, its innovative cable solution for providing fibre connections to customers in high rise buildings and multi dwelling units (MDUs).

Telecom Italia confirmed again today that it will not push a FTTH-only strategy to deploy its NGN access network.

Fastweb has selected Nokia Siemens Networks as a technological partner when it launches mobile services laterName

In the next three years Telecom Italia plans to deploy FTTx both to sell broadband access to its fixed customers and to backhaul mobile traffic.

WorldSpace Italia expects to begin broadcasting throughout Italy in late 2008. The content bouquet is expected to consist of 40-50 channels of commercial-free music, news, entertainment, talk and sports programming that will likely be sold at € 8 per month.

Nokia Siemens Networks and Pirelli Broadband Solutions have signed an agreement for cooperation on 3G Femto Home Access solution.

Pirelli's femto-enabled CPEs coupled with the 3G Femto Home Access network solution from Nokia Siemens Networks will enable operators to introduce femtocell-based services to home and small office environments through a wide choice of CPE models developed by Pirelli in compliance with the Nokia Siemens Networks' open architecture.

Combination of Pirelli's PGT Photonics and CyOptics supports development of a new generation of optical components. Pirelli to take an approximately 30% stake in CyOptic.

Nokia Siemens Networks will be a Telecom Italia's strategic supplier for mobile Broadband Access Networks with High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and Long Term Evolution technologies.

Seltatel is the new technological partner of Telefonica through the services and telecommunication technologies IP-based offer for small and medium Spanish enterprises.

Alcatel-Lucent has been selected by Aria as prime supplier for building and maintaining a nation-wide wireless broadband network based on WiMAX 802.16e-2005 (Rev-e) technology.

Earlier this year, Aria won the auction of the WiMAX 3.5 GHz radio frequencies in all Italian regions.