Nokia and Open Fiber bridge the 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). 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,” Stefano Paggi, Network & Operations Director at Open Fiber, said.

“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, added.

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.

 

About the Nokia Solution

• The Nokia solution includes 7360 ISAM FX-16 and FX-4 platforms, 7362 DF – 16GW, 7368 ISAM ONTs and the 5520 AMS Element Manager.
• The Nokia 7360 FX platform already supports new technology such as XGS-PON, NG-PON2 and will evolve towards a transformation into Software Defined Access Networks (SDAN), perfectly fitting the aim and needs of Open Fiber to build a network that will be open to provide access to other operators.

 

About Open Fiber

Open Fiber was created to build high-speed fiber optic electronic communication networks distributed nationwide to help recover the competitive edge of the national economic system and evolve towards ‘Industry 4.0’. Open Fiber is a company jointly owned by Enel and CDP, operating only in the wholesale market and offering access to all interested market operators.