Digitisation of the country
In line with the objectives established by the Digital Agenda in 2020, and the Governments super-fast broadband Strategy, TIM’s investment plan is strongly oriented towards ensuring access to fixed and mobile super-fast broadband to the greatest possible number of Italians, reducing the gap that still separates them from more developed European countries, providing ever faster connection speeds and making the most of technological evolution.
During the year the TIM Wholesale Department became fully operational with an organizational change that gave rise to the creation of the New Equivalence Model. The aim is to further strengthen the equality of treatment guarantees among the commercial retail departments of TIM and other operators, in a logic of efficiency, autonomy, quality and transparency in the activities linked to the access infrastructure.
The strategy is based on an excellent network infrastructure, the creation of which will be further accelerated over the Plan period. More specifically, around 5 billion in investments are envisaged in Italy, dedicated to speeding up the development of ultrabroadband networks. TIM’s investment plan does not only concern municipalities that have a secure economic return but also the more disadvantaged regions.
By the end of 2019, TIM plans to have increased Italy’s coverage with new generation networks to over 99% of the population with the LTE mobile network (4G), and 95% of the population with optic fibre; in particular, by the end of the Plan, 50 major towns and cities will have connection speeds of up to 1Gbit. TIM thus confirms its position as the undisputed leader in infrastructure development and in the digitisation of the country, completing the ultrabroadband coverage of Italy independently and quickly, thanks to a combination of new fixed and wireless technologies which, with respect to the past, will permit greater efficiency and the reduction of costs exploiting the reuse of its own infrastructure to the full.
The increased coverage will support ever greater penetration in terms of Ultrabroadband Customers also thanks to the numerous strategic partnerships with the leading Media Players on the domestic market (SKY, MEDIASET, NETFLIX) for the Pay-TV service.
As regards the fixed network, in addition to the expansion and acceleration of FTTx solutions, TIM has planned for the widespread introduction of new access technologies which speed up the connection for each client using FTTCab accesses, supporting offers of up to 300 Mbit/s (through eVDSL technology)
In the mobile area, developments in the Three Carrier Aggregation solution are also expected, with speeds of up to 300 Mbps, and for native voice on the LTE network, thanks to the implementation of “VoLTE” (Voice Over LTE). Work is being carried out on new solution to enrich the current 4G “user Experience” which will improve the quality of the service to manage the increased traffic and satisfy customer expectations “everywhere and anytime.” There is also a plan to use small cells to cover areas of particular commercial interest, such as hospitals, stadiums, tourist centres, stations, high-speed trains and tunnels.
The new 2017-2019 plan also boosts the structural transformation of the Network. The innovative investments and those dedicated to decommissioning and network modernisation will act on the network architectures and the operating models, making the network more modern, more capable and more efficient in the operative management (significant savings on energy, maintenance and delivery/assurance).
The expected increase in customer numbers will be supported by bundle offers (fixed/ mobile, voice/data/video) that will provide Internet access from a variety of devices (PC, TV, Smartphone, Tablet) while promoting the replacement of old terminals with next generation ones.
The new 2017-19 plan will therefore strengthen the process of improving the overall coverage and quality of the TIM network.
