MAP > Internet Providers in Italy

Italy’s huge telecom market has become among the highest mobile penetration rates in the European Union, and it has benefitted from the progressive government programs focused on developing fiber broadband sector. The broadband market has a very effective competition with DSL sector and has been supplemented by the vibrant fiber sector spearheaded by the investment efforts from the Telecom Italia, the other telco’s as well as the municipal government. The regulatory measures have been introduced to be able to facilitate the access to the NGNs, while the government has been investing 4 billion pounds inoffering the broadband across this country.

Wholesale provider by the name Open Fiber has been able to extend the fiber-based broadband access to the underserved areas and also signed wholesale access agreements with the number of operators, and this includes the Sky Italia that has been expected to launch the broadband services in northern Spring of the year 2019. The vibrant mobile market has been on the fall in terms of the number of subscribers in recent years as the customers respond to the attractive off-net pricing as well as the bundled offers from main providers.

The market has been able to change the merger of the wind as well as 3 Italia. As a result of merger, market has gained new entrant in form of Iliad that secured access to the spectrum and to be part of the Wind Tre’s infrastructure to ensure it to provide services while its network was being developed. This company launched the services in May of 2018, and by the following August, it had secured over 2 million subscribers. Evident popularity of the offers has been able to disrupt the market, leading to the competitors rethinking their strategies. Well, Wind Tre has struggled with the customer losses in the year 2018, while continuing the effort to be able to merge networks of the Wind and 3 Italia got to be disrupted by brief ban on the commercial ties with the principal vendor ZTE.

The network operators have been among the debut first in Europe to the trial services based on the 5G. To that end, they have received support by the regulator that made available spectrum in 3.5 GHz band for the trial licenses. An auction of the spectrum in the range of bands for the 5G got to be completed in theyear 2018 on October, hence raising 6.55 billion pounds.