Open Fiber, the wholesale ISP established by Italy’s state-backed utility group Enel in 2016, has reportedly connected its first customer as part of the ‘Italia a 1 Giga’ project. Telecoms new site Mondo Mobile Web notes that the activation took place in Isola delle Femmine, which is situated in north-west Sicily (Palermo), in conjunction with partner ISP Dimensione. (Note: back in November 2022 Dimensione was also the first ISP to resell 10Gbps connectivity via Open Fiber’s XGS-PON network.)
In May 2022 Open Fiber was awarded contracts to deploy fibre infrastructure in nine regions of Italy as part of the ‘Italia a 1 Giga’ scheme. In total, the rollouts will cover 3,881 municipalities in so-called ‘grey’ areas, which are defined as those markets currently served by just one fixed line telco and where no competing networks are likely to be rolled out without government support. The contracts for the remaining Italian regions were awarded to TIM’s fixed network venture, FiberCop.