BT Italia gets WiMAX plans moving
08 April 2008
A recently established collaboration between BT's Italian operation, BT Italia, and AriaDSL, a local DSL provider that also holds 3.5GHz spectrum across most of Italy, will see the two companies aiming for commercial WiMAX deployment early next year.
Under the terms of the agreement, BT Italia will use AriaDSL's wireless services to add to its offering of ICT solutions for its business customers, such as point-to-point data services, while AriaDSL is to use BT Italia's network management expertise to speed up time-to-market for commercial WiMAX deployment.
"We will have a WiMAX pilot [using the 802.16e standard] by the end of October 2008, then have full deployment after consolidation of the pilot results [planned for the beginning of 2009]," said Giancarlo Crisanti, BT Italia's Business Management director.
"BT will use wireless "last mile" by AriaDSL to provide services to its customers [aimed at replacing Telecom Italia's wholesale services in the last mile] and AriaDSL will use BT services in a number of areas [such as the provision of network circuits and service platforms] to fulfil its requirements to start WiMAX operations as soon as possible," said Crisanti.
Crisanti views WiMAX as a "must have" alternative broadband technology to DSL and fibre in a country such as Italy that has a mountainous terrain and where customers can often be sparsely distributed. BT Italia has a 15,000km fibre optic network in Italy.
BT Italia has no plans to use the 3.5GHz spectrum for true mobility, however; it has just launched mobile services as a MVNO over Vodafone Italia's network.
Other than Italy, BT has no other WiMAX deployments underway. The company refuses to comment on whether or not it will bid in the auction for UK spectrum in the 2.5GHz-2.69GHz frequency band, which is scheduled for this summer.
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