Thanks to a shared investment between two telecommunications companies, a long-standing fiber-optic problem that has been dragging on for more than two decades and threatened to damage the competitiveness and innovation capacity of some of Forlì’s largest companies appears to be on its way to a solution.
Commercially, the ultrafast connectivity service will be offered by the local telecommunications operator ‘Zal,’ while implementing the fiber optic network where it is still lacking will be FibreConnect, a private operator that specializes precisely in cabling Italy’s industrial and manufacturing areas, many of which–including Villa Selva–are inexplicably still not reached by the fiber optic infrastructure.
“In the Villa Selva intervention, 1,900 kilometers of fiber optics will be laid, with work starting in these weeks and completion by October-end of the year,” explains Renzo Ravaglia, managing director of FibreConnect. Fiber optic service will thus be made available through the Forlì-based commercial operator ‘Zal’ to about 150 businesses in the industrial zone, FibreConnect’s “proximity” partners. “We will provide symmetric connectivity up to 10 Gigabits, true connectivity of the highest quality,” explains Paolo Casadei, CEO of Zal Telecomunicazioni.
Recounting her ordeal with fiber optics in Villa Selva is Loretta Carbonetti, entrepreneur and owner of ‘Casta,’ a company that works out of two plants on Fratelli Lumiere Street. ‘Casta’ is a company rooted in Forli, which is more than 50 years old and deals with professional catering equipment, in particular it is a world leader in wok cookers. From Forlì it exports its production all over the globe and, in its particular field, is a benchmark of ‘Made in Italy’. Yet for more than 20 years it has had to “make do” with sub-optimal solutions and alternatives to fiber optic telematic connectivity.