China’s Huawei Inks Strategic Partnership Agreement with Italy’s Fastweb

Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Italy’s Fastweb to jointly build next-generation ultrafast broadband networks and research advanced technologies.

Fastweb, a subsidiary of Swisscom, plans to invest EUR2 billion for technology innovation and development within the next four years. According to its plan, Fastweb expects to provide ultrafast broadband access for 5.5 million households and businesses at the end of 2014, covering 20% of Italian population. Based on Fastweb’s strategy, the company will build 100 Mbit/s ultrafast broadband networks that uses copper-based vectoring technology and a “fiber to the curb” solution.

Huawei’s node level vectoring solution can help Fastweb to accomplish this target. This solution provides vectoring for different devices located at the same site, ensuring ultrafast bandwidths accessible for all users while meeting regulatory compliance in terms of copper access.

Alberto Calcagno, general manager of Fastweb, said that the cooperation with Huawei will bring new technological solutions in order to provide a growing speed on their networks. By 2014, it will reach 20% of the population with a network that supports up to 100M. In the second phase of the project, they will implement new technologies that will extend up to 10 times the bandwidth using the existing infrastructure.

Roberto Loiola, vice president of Huawei Western Europe, said that the company will continue and strongly reaffirm its commitment in Italy. This agreement is another important example of investment in the technological excellence for the country. The availability of ultrafast telecommunications infrastructures, that are to be adequate to the top countries of the world, is a pre-requisite for the growth of Italy.