Iliad Italia S.p.A. is an Italian

telecommunications company A telecommunications company is a kind of electronic communications service provider, more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many t ...

wholly-owned subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidiary company. Unl ...

of the French

group A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic iden ...

Iliad S.A. In December 2022, with 9.56 million active lines, it is the fourth

mobile operator A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a mobile network provider, mobile network carrier, mobile , wireless service provider, wireless carrier, wireless operator, wireless telco, or cellular company, is a telecommunications provider of se ...

in Italy following

Wind Tre Wind Tre S.p.A., stylized as WINDTRE, is an Italian telecommunications company of the CK Hutchison Holdings, CK Hutchison Holdings Limited Company group, group, which offers Mobile telephony, mobile and fixed-line telephony Service (economics), ...

, TIM and

Vodafone Vodafone Group Public Limited Company () is a British Multinational company, multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates Service (economic ...

History

Iliad Italia S.p.A. was founded in 2016 as an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...

of the French

Iliad S.A. In 2017, in view of the launch and in compliance with the provisions of the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

, the acquisition of the frequencies ceased by

began following the

merger Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of a company, business organization, or one of their operating units is transferred to or consolidated with another entity. They may happen through direct absorpt ...

3 Italy Hutchison 3G Enterprises S.A.R.L., commonly known as Hutchison 3G (acronym H3G) and trading as 3 (Three), is the owner of a brand name that operates several Mobile network, mobile phone networks and broadband Internet Service Provider, Interne ...

and

Wind Wind is the natural movement of atmosphere of Earth, air or other gases relative to a planetary surface, planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heatin ...

; as of 31 December 2017, Iliad has acquired almost 300 of the sites abandoned by Wind Tre, while the remaining will be transferred, according to the agreements, by the end of 2019. The French holding said it would invest more than €1 billion for the launch and development of the new Italian

(including those to win the new 5G

frequencies Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. Frequency is an important parameter used in science and engineering to specify the rate of oscillatory and vibratory phenomena, such as mechanical vibrations, audio ...

in Italy) with a thousand expected hires. On 16 January 2018 the name of the Italian

administrator Administrator or admin may refer to: Job roles Computing and internet * Database administrator, a person who is responsible for the environmental aspects of a database * Forum administrator, one who oversees discussions on an Internet forum * N ...

of Iliad Italia, Benedetto Levi, was officially announced, together with the presentation of the new logo and the institutional

Website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

. As part of the implementation of the infrastructures required to cover the Italian territory with its own network, on 16 February 2018, an agreement was reached with the

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

group Cellnex, which provides Iliad Italia with over 7700 cellular

antennas In radio-frequency engineering, an antenna (American English) or aerial (British English) is an electronic device that converts an alternating electric current into radio waves (transmitting), or radio waves into an electric current (receivi ...

in Italy. Finally, on 29 May 2018, the official launch of the operator took place, in conjunction with the presentation of the commercial offer and the start of the sale of

SIM card A typical SIM card (mini-SIM with micro-SIM cutout)A SIM card or SIM (subscriber identity module) is an integrated circuit (IC) intended to securely store an international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number and its related key, which are u ...

s with new numbers or to carry out the number portability from other phone operators. On 18 July 2018, just under two months after its launch, Iliad Italia officially announced that it had reached one million customers between requests for portability and new subscriptions. On 4 September 2018, the Iliad group releases the results of the first half of 2018, reporting the achievement – by early August – of one and a half million

customer In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a Client (business), client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a Good (economics), good, service (economics), service, product (business), product, or an Intellectual prop ...

s in Italy. On 6 September 2018, Iliad Italia issued a

press release A press release (also known as a media release) is an official statement delivered to members of the news media for the purpose of providing new information, creating an official statement, or making an announcement directed for public releas ...

confirming the achievement of two million customers. During the first semester of 2021, Iliad reached the

break-even Break-even (or break even), often abbreviated as B/E in finance (sometimes called point of equilibrium), is the point of balance making neither a Profit (economics), profit nor a loss. It involves a situation when a business makes just enough reve ...

point and an

EBITDA A company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (commonly abbreviated EBITDA, pronounced ) is a measure of a company's profitability of the operating business only, thus before any effects of indebtedness, state-mandat ...

of 6 million euro, the first positive result since its foundation. On 6 March 2020 Iliad Italia obtained general authorization from the Ministry of Economic Development for the provision of the telephone service accessible to the public. On 7 July 2020, the signing of an agreement was formalized thanks to which Iliad can operate in the fixed telephony market using the Open Fiber

FTTH Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber opt ...

fiber-optic access network, which is accompanied by a similar agreement signed with Fastweb on 6 October 2022. On 9 August 2021 Iliad became a partner of FiberCop, while on 25 January 2022 the FTTH fiber optic offer was officially launched, with overall speeds of up to 5 Gbps in download and 700 Mbps in upload for the areas covered by the technology EPON, and up to 2.5 Gbps in download and 500 Mbps in upload for the areas covered by

GPON ITU-T G.984 is the series of standards for implementing a gigabit-capable passive optical network (GPON). It is commonly used to implement the link to the customer (the ''last kilometre'', or ''last mile'') of fibre-to-the-premises ( FTTP) serv ...

technology. The service is provided using the Open Fiber and FiberCop networks. The operator provides

modem The Democratic Movement (, ; MoDem ) is a centre to centre-right political party in France, whose main ideological trends are liberalism and Christian democracy, and that is characterised by a strong pro-Europeanist stance. MoDem was establis ...

- routers on loan for use, called iliadboxes, designed by the company itself and based on the French

freebox The Freebox is an Asymmetric digital subscriber line, ADSL-VDSL-FTTH modem and a set-top box that the French Internet service provider named Free (ISP), Free (part of the Iliad group) provides to its DSL-FTTH subscribers. Its main use is as a hi ...

es. As of January 2023, its Italian

mobile network A cellular network or mobile network is a telecommunications network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless and the network is distributed over land areas called ''cells'', each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver (suc ...

counted about 16,200 active site nodes: the network is composed by an own-network of about 9,470 sites with another 6,730 sites in non-densely populated areas via an equal

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

– namely, Zefiro Net – between Iliad Italia and Wind Tre.

Simbox distributions

Iliad introduced the SIMboxes in

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, a new type of sales point, conceived and created by the French group, ''Aures'' and already in use since 2014 on the French market by

Free Mobile Free Mobile S.A.S. is a French telecommunications company and subsidiary of Free S.A.S. that provides wireless Internet to consumers in France. It was the fourth mobile network operator to obtain a metropolitan French 3G license in 2009. It a ...

; these are

vending machine A vending machine is an automated machine that dispenses items such as snacks, beverages, cigarettes, and lottery tickets to consumers after cash, a credit card, or other forms of payment are inserted into the machine or payment is otherwise m ...

s, which allow customers to register and purchase it independently.

Network

Iliad's 3G, 4G and 5G network is being implemented; however, the operator benefits from national coverage through an agreement with

in RAN sharing (3G and 4G) and

roaming Roaming is a wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information (''telecommunication'') between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or oth ...

(2G). Iliad signed an agreement, respectively, with Cellnex (February 2018) and INWIT (February 2019) in order to install its

on their

towers A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...

. Iliad Italia is currently using, among others,

CommScope CommScope Holding Company, Inc. is an American network infrastructure provider based in Claremont, North Carolina. CommScope employs over 22,000 employees. The company joined the Nasdaq stock exchange on October 25, 2013. CommScope designs an ...

telecommunications equipment Telecommunications equipment (also telecoms equipment or communications equipment) is a type of hardware which is used for the purposes of telecommunications. Since the 1990s the boundary between telecoms equipment and IT hardware has become blurr ...

and is collaborating with

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

(April 2019) and

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

(September 2019) to implement a

state-of-the-art The state of the art (SOTA or SotA, sometimes cutting edge, leading edge, or bleeding edge) refers to the highest level of general development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field achieved at a particular time. However, in some contex ...

national network (

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communication protocol, communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic ...

) in Italy based on

segment routing Segment routing, a form of computer networking, is a modern variant of source routing that is being developed within thSPRINGand IPv6 working groups of the IETF. In a segment routed network, an ingress node may prepend a header to packets that ...

(SRv6) and to achieve its 5G network.

References

External links

* {{Italian mobile phone companies Iliad SA Telecommunications companies of Italy Companies based in Milan Italian brands Telecommunications companies established in 2016 2016 establishments in Italy