Accepted Italy’s toughest challenge in 5G
The last contract for the challenge of building open access 5G networks in Italy’s most rural campagna più dura have been finalised. The work goes to a consortium of tower company INWIT and two of its shareholders, the mobile network operators Telecom Italia (TIM) and Vodafone in a contract worth nearly €350 million.
Tough tender
The original government tender was worth €2 billion and had been split into six regional lots. Infratel, an agency within Italy’s Ministry of Economic Development, had guaranteed all the tenders would collectively be worth €2 billion to construct 5G networks in areas where operators had found network building commercially unviable. The tenders specified the installation of 5G sites in 2,000 areas of Italy and for cabling up the optical transport network to interconnect 10,000 mobile sites.
Trento
The INWIT pact is now contracted to cover the challenging terrain of the provinces of Trento and Bolzano. The contract is worth a combined €345.7 million for a job which other contractors have passed up on in previous rounds. The villages tucked in the mountains of Trento in northern Italy are notoriously accommodating but digitising the Dolomite could be tough work for engineers.
Bolzano
Bolzano’s views are similarly breathtaking but network testers could soon find themselves wheezing as they traverse the steep terrains to check the reception in each small cell. TIM engineers selected for the job will need the constitution of mountain goats. They must also be careful not to affect the work of the Rewilding Network, which released wolves into the region in 2018 and created a thriving population of predatory pack hunters.
Molti million’s
Winning bidders will get up to 90% of their rollout costs paid by the government and must guarantee transmission speeds of at least 150Mbps to at least 40% of the 2,000 communities included in the tender. Work must be completed by end-June 2026. TIM had previously won tenders worth €725 million in the previous call for help in rural 5G rollouts. The Italian government says it has now committed €5.5 billion in public and private funding to its national broadband strategy.
Recupero e resilienza
The €2 billion tenders were in addition to the €3.7 billion allocated for the 1Giga initiative for Italy, and about €600 million to connect schools, hospitals and health facilities plus more than €45 million to reach the smaller islands, provided for by the National Plan of Recovery and Resilience for 2022.