The future of telecommunications in Italy: between ultra-wideband and 5G

Distance learning and smart working, but also video calls with relatives and friends. During the Covid-19 emergency, the internet became an essential tool for our lives, both at work and on the personal and social level. All connected, therefore, with a real boom in the circulation of data that has tested networks and infrastructures of all the countries of the world, including Italy.
What is the situation in our country? What are the challenges that the telecommunications world is facing? We talked about it during a new 20-minute live broadcast from the future with Marco Bellezza and Serena Dell’Agli, respectively CEO and technical secretary of Infratel Italia, an Italian public company operating in the telecommunications sector for the Ministry of Economic Development.

The Covid-19 experience. Our interview could only start from the current situation and the emergency that we have faced for the pandemic. “We rate the experience as not negative – explained Marco Bellezza -. I do not feel positive because we could have defined it this way if we had had an ultra-wideband network spread throughout the national territory. In the difficulty and in the emergency situation, also thanks to the initiatives of the Government, we managed to “keep up” as they say in these cases. It is clear that this happened in a different way from area to area, but overall I would say that the network has held up well “.

Ultra-wide band and 5G networks. Infratel Italia currently deals with the implementation of the “Italian Strategy for the Ultra Wide Band”, an important plan that has the aim of contributing to reducing the existing infrastructure and market gap.
But the 5G revolution is also upon us. “5G – said Marco Bellezza – is an opportunity for our country. At European level we are the third country for the penetration of 5G, we are far ahead of our competitors thanks to the foresight of Undersecretary Giacomelli, it is right to mention it. […] Certainly, however, it is easy to lose this advantageous situation, in the sense that everyone sees the great potential of this new technology. I think that in the current phase it is necessary to think about the construction of a 5G infrastructure necessarily coupled with the work for the ultra-broadband. The era of infrastructure duplication is now over, there is no more room for market inefficiencies, we must work towards a single publicly controlled network “. And it cannot be otherwise, according to Bellezza, because the network today assumes a fundamental role given that “it is a factor that enables the exercise of constitutional rights”.