Rome, May 24, 2023 – FibreConnect and Tiscali Italia announce a strategic agreement with the goal of bringing ultra broadband to Italy’s Industrial and Artisan Areas (AIAs). The partnership will make it possible to implement connectivity services that are crucial for innovation in Italian companies today, also with a view to giving value to investments made or planned in the directions of Industry 4.0, taking advantage of the benefits offered by services such as Cloud, Smart Manufacturing and Internet of Things (IoT).
FibreConnect, an independent operator offering Wholesale Only, high-performance and reliable connectivity services for businesses in the Italian AIAs, will be in charge of network development. Tiscali Italia, one of the top telecommunications operators in the ultrabroadband access segment and the main operating company of the Tessellis Group, will be responsible for the implementation of value-added connectivity services, with the goal of becoming the operator of reference in the territory.
The agreement between FibreConnect and Tiscali envisages, in a first phase, the coverage of thousands of Small and Medium Enterprises located in Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Lombardy and Apulia, realizing, in a short time, infrastructures that are fundamental for the development of the territories. Later, the collaboration will be extended to other regions to further increase ultrabroadband coverage in industrial areas that are the beating heart of our country’s economy.
In Italy today, there are about one million companies operating within AIAs that need the tools necessary to unlock their full potential for innovation. The strategic partnership will therefore play a key role in accelerating network development in the chosen areas.
According to data from the ISTAT Report “Enterprises and ICT” for 2022, only 13.2 percent of Small and Medium Enterprises in Italy (with more than 10 employees) have access to connectivity of at least 1 Giga. The remaining 82.8 percent can rely on fixed broadband that provides speeds of at least 30 Mbit/s, which is not adequate for the connectivity needs of businesses today. All this is in the face of increased demand for Internet access for work purposes: SMEs in Italy where more than 50 percent of employees have Internet access for work purposes increased by about 23 percent over 2019.
“The agreement with FibreConnect is a further step in the realization of the Company’s Business Plan, consolidating Tiscali’s role as a technology enabler, able to create synergies and combine its assets in an ecosystem capable of generating value and innovation. Tiscali, in fact, is pursuing a series of strategic operations to reshape its positioning, investing in offering innovative services to the business world, as well as to households. The work on the Artisanal Industrial Areas confirms its commitment to the country’s business class so that it can benefit from massive ultrafast fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) coverage and high value-added vertical services developed precisely for homogeneous groups of users. We are convinced that FibreConnect represents the ideal partner to seize this important opportunity for development and economic growth.” said Davide Rota, CEO of Tessellis.
“The agreement signed with Tiscali, one of the most important Italian telecom operators, represents confirmation that our business strategy, based on the Wholesale-Only model, is able to provide an effective response to current market needs,” said Renzo Ravaglia, CEO and Co-Founder of FibreConnect. “Thanks to an all-fiber, ultra-high-performance infrastructure, we are able to enable the ultra-broadband services needed to unleash the full potential of the small and medium-sized businesses in the Industrial and Craft Areas that will be reached by FibreConnect’s network, which will be able to increase their level of competitiveness in a context where communications infrastructure is of comparable importance to energy or transportation.”
Thus, it seems clear the great opportunity offered by the collaboration between Tiscali and FibreConnect, which, by bringing super-fast fiber optics to selected Italian industrial and artisan areas, will enable local businesses to participate in the fourth industrial revolution. Grafting into a framework of collaboration with local operators, the partnership will allow Tiscali greater penetration in industrial and artisanal areas throughout the country, expanding its customer base in light of making certain commitments to purchase minimum volumes of connectivity services in areas identified during the course of the project.
Infrastructure will contribute to the revaluation of the areas involved, incentivizing companies to stay in the area, transferring the resulting direct and indirect economic benefits to it, in line with the goals of the digital agenda.
Tags: Tiscali