Telecom Italia (TIM) and the government’s infrastructure company Infratel are accelerating efforts to improve broadband connectivity in rural areas during the COVID-19 crisis. The pair are collaborating to deploy fibre networks in eight Italian regions: Abruzzo, Sardinia, Tuscany, Puglia, Calabria, Lazio, Lombardy and Marche. TIM says work has already been carried out in 241 municipalities, and the total will rise to 320 by May with the addition of more than 1,600 cabinets. The rollouts cover so-called ‘white areas’ which are currently lacking acceptable broadband coverage.
TIM says it will acquire a ‘significant’ amount of dark fibre infrastructure built by Infratel as part of the initiative. The bulk of households will be connected via a combination of fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) and VDSL technologies, though some will receive direct fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connections.
Source: https://www.commsupdate.com/articles/2020/04/03/tim-and-infratel-speed-up-rural-fibre-rollouts/