Nokia, Open Fiber bridge digital divide in Italy

Open Fiber, the sole wholesale-only player in the Italian broadband market, selected Nokia for a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) rollout that will bring ultra-broadband services to the small towns and rural areas of Italy.

The Open Fiber network will bring optical fiber from a point of presence to the customer's home and deliver speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps), said a Nokia press release.

In line with the founding principles of the Gigabit Society, the new fiber deployment provides Open Fiber with a future-proof network that can support next generation fiber technologies.

While drawing up its ultra-broadband strategy in 2015, the Italian government identified four types of clusters (A, B, C and D) in the country: where each municipality was assigned to one cluster based on factors including lower or higher housing density, presence of broadband coverage and market size.

Nokia has been selected as the sole supplier for clusters C and D (white areas) and will deliver products, services and software needed to plan, design, deploy and support the end-to-end active network infrastructure based on GPON technologies

"We have selected Nokia as our supplier in clusters C and D to deliver giga-services and pave the way for future ultrabroadband technology evolutions. We are sure that Nokia's extensive experience in fixed networks will enable us to build an efficient network that uses best-of-breed components and technologies. With Nokia's solutions we will be able to offer services at 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) and in the future at 40 Gbps on the access network. We will also have the opportunity to adopt the SDAN (Software Defined Networking) paradigm and therefore to maximize the potential of a new generation access network, with high automation, programmable and integrated with cloud environments,” said Stefano Paggi, Network & Operations Director at Open Fiber.

"As a worldwide leader in telecommunication solutions, and a long-time front-runner in fiber technologies, Nokia has the products and delivery capability to support Open Fiber in this deployment journey. Our end-to-end solutions, professional services, consulting, maintenance and support services reduce risk and accelerate deployments, giving Open Fiber the confidence to adopt new technologies, enter new markets and extend the performance of existing networks," Alessandro Manno, Director Global Enterprise Italy said.

Nokia will also offer its professional services and customer engineering experience to fulfil solution validation and integration, installation and commissioning, on-site support, solution training and project management.