Latina is one of the first cities in Italy to boast a new generation telephone infrastructure now fully operational for the benefit of private citizens and businesses. The major infrastructure work required to create the city's fixed and mobile ultrafast networks was illustrated today by Giovanni Di Giorgi, Mayor of Latina, and Francesco Gentile, Head of Access Operations Line Abruzzo, Molise and Southern Lazio of Telecom Italia.
Approximately a year after the launch of the project, which saw Telecom Italia working to build the new fibre optic Next Generation Access Network (NGAN) and 4G mobile network, ultrabroadband is now a reality in Latina. This result has been achieved thanks to the significant investments made by Telecom Italia, amounting to approximately three million euros, and its collaboration with the municipal authorities of Latina, both of which have allowed the excavation and cable laying work to take place quickly, minimising the time and cost of the work and its impact on the city.
In Latina, the programme already covers many areas of the city and will reach more than 30,000 property units, which will become 35,000 within 2015 as a result of the 60 km of fibre optic cables laid (32 of which using innovative excavation techniques, ensuring a low impact on the population), allowing over 165 roadside cabinets to be connected along the city's streets to serve around 113,000 citizens.
The result achieved confirms the commitment on the part of both Telecom Italia and the municipal authorities to boost the work being done and quickly provide households and businesses with a 30 Megabit Internet connection, thus adding Latina to the élite group of Italian cities where ultrabroadband services are now available.
Telecom Italia's “Ultra Internet” services based on FTTCab (Fiber to the Cabinet) technology already offer a super-fast 30 Megabit per second download speed connection with performance and service levels that dramatically improve the experience of surfing the Net. In future, there is potential to improve the performance of fibre optic connections to provide speeds of up to 100 Megabits per second.
Fibre optic cable allows HD video, high quality multiplayer online gaming and multimedia content to be enjoyed simultaneously on smartphones, tablets and smart TVs, both at home and at work. Furthermore, businesses can access the world of Impresa Semplice professional IT solutions, using them to their full potential thanks to the fibre optic connection. Ultrabroadband also enables innovative applications, such as telepresence, video surveillance, cloud computing services for businesses, as well as applications allowing local authorities to implement the smart city model, including systems for security and monitoring the territory, infomobility and sensor networks for environmental tele-monitoring.
As for mobile telephony, Telecom Italia has provided Latina with a new 4G network, with data transmission speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s in download and up to 50 Mbit/s in upload, thus making HD multimedia content and services available on the move. As a result of the 32 TIM 4G radio base stations now activated, around 98% of the population are now covered. A further 3 stations boasting this technology will come into service soon and contribute to improving performance even further.
The TIM 4G mobile network offers download speeds of 5-10 times higher than that of the HSPA network at 14.4 Mbps and more than double that offered by HSPA at 42 Mbps, thus offering citizens performance and service levels that significantly improve internet browsing and allow the use of innovative content on the move, such as HD video streaming.
“We are glad that Latina is one of the Italian cities to have a modern network infrastructure allowing private citizens and businesses to make use of innovative services that contribute to the development of the local economy - stated Francesco Gentile, Head of Access Operations Line Abruzzo, Molise and Southern Lazio of Telecom Italia - As part of its investment plan, Telecom Italia has decided to allocate a significant amount to the development of its fibre optic and 4G networks. This is an ambitious project which, by 2016, is expected to reach over 50% of the Italian population with NGAN and 80% of the population with the 4G mobile network, making a considerable contribution to achieving the aims of the European Digital Agenda. This is all now a reality in Latina, also thanks to the active involvement of the municipal authorities".
“For the city of Latina this is an important step in technological innovation” - the Mayor Giovanni Di Giorgi said - “capable of providing a concrete response to the requirements of businesses, professionals and all citizens. The challenge of competition and development also pass through technology and in this scenario Latina intends to be ready. I thank Telecom Italia for the collaboration, which we hope will continue in coming years to provide the city with the network infrastructure necessary to guarantee a further leap forward in terms of services for private citizens and businesses”.
By creating ultrabroadband infrastructure and dedicated solutions for the city of Latina, Telecom Italia has confirmed its commitment to innovating at local level and disseminating the services enabled by these solutions, thus contributing to the sustainable growth of the local economy and to improving quality of life for citizens.
Latina, 26 June 2014
