Pisa Express: More Italian FTTH
Created November 1, 2017
News and BusinessItalian wholesale operator Open Fiber, public sector investment house Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) and the City of Pisa have signed a €12 million undertaking to build an FTTH network to service the inhabitants of Pisa. Work will commence in November, and the aim is to cover the city within 18 months. In total, 35,000 premises will be passed using around 20,000 km of fibre. Open Fiber points out that FTTH can support up to 1 Gbits/s, both download and upload.
The agreement with the City of Pisa establishes the procedures and times for digging and progressing fibre optic installation. Where possible, Open Fiber will use underground ducts and infrastructure to limit as much as possible the impact of excavations on the surroundings and any inconvenience to the community. Excavations will be made by prioritising sustainable and low environmental impact.
According to Roberto Tognaccini, of Network Operations Center’s Open Fiber Center, FTTH is a radical paradigm shift in the field of ultra-wide bandwidth, and people and businesses in Pisa can utilise the technology for many applications in many different fields. And the deployment emphasis will be on minimising disruption to the city’s population. “For more than 50% of the plan, we will use existing infrastructures,” says Tognaccini. “In other cases, we will act with the least possible impact using non-invasive techniques such as mini-trenches and one day dig.”
The Pisa FTTH development comes a week after Italian regulator Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCOM) released figures that show the country’s fixed line broadband total reaching 16.2 million connections at the end of the second quarter, adding 880,000 connections year-on-year. AGCOM says a reduction of 790,000 xDSL accesses was offset by an increase of 1.67 million connections using other technologies, mainly FTTH and FTTC.
