- The company was honoured at the FTTHFTTH “Fiber to the Home” is the technology that connects POPs, located in exchanges, to end users’ property units with fiber optics. Conference in Berlin for its contribution to the development of full fibre-optic infrastructure in Europe.
- The CEO, Mr Gola, “We are proud of our contribution to Italy’s breakthrough in digital infrastructure. Now, we need to accelerate the deployment of fibre-optic networks.”
Berlin, 20 March 2024 – Open Fiber has been honoured with the FTTH CouncilFTTH Council A European organisation founded in 2004 by major industry players with the aim of accelerating the deployment of fiber connectivity across the continent. It includes more than 150 members including FTTH operators, equipment manufacturers and academic institutions. The FTTH Council aims to disseminate Fiber to the Home, which it views as key to driving local economic development and building a prosperous and sustainable future. Europe Operator Award 2024, the European prize awarded to companies particularly remarkable for their contribution to the development of FTTH (Fibre To The Home) fibre-optic infrastructures across the continent, the very ones able to ensure the GigabitGigabit The Gigabit is the unit of measurement that represents 1 billion bits and is abbreviated as Gbit or Gb. This unit of measurement is often used, together with the megabit and the kilobit, in relation to time (in seconds) for calculating the transmission speed of digital signals, mainly used to calculate the speed of a data download. The Gbit/s is currently a widely used unit of measurement to refer to data transmission speed in computer networks. connection speed at the heart of the Italian and European connectivity plans.
Open Fiber was awarded by FTTH Council Europe, the European organisation created to accelerate the spread of fibre-optic connectivity and the development of a digital society in Europe. With more than 14 million property units connected to FTTH by September 2023, Open Fiber is the leading Italian FTTH operator and the largest among non-incumbent (ex-monopolist) operators in Europe.
The award was presented to Mr Giuseppe Gola, CEO of Open Fiber, during the FTTH Conference, the annual meeting organised by FTTH Council Europe, held this year in Berlin. During the FTTH Conference, Idate’s annual report on the state of FTTH connectivity in Europe for September 2022 – September 2023 was unveiled. In this time span, Italy recorded an increase of 1.5 million property units (UIs) compared to the previous survey, reaching 15.5 million UIs, representing around 60% of the total, close to the European average (EU27+ UK). Largely due to the efforts of Open Fiber, our country has seen remarkable growth in recent years. In 2018, Italy’s FTTH coverage stood at 24%. However, the take-up rate shows a less flattering figure, i.e., the actual deployment of FTTH networks, with Italy still significantly trailing behind the EU27+ UK average (53%) at around 27%.
“We are very pleased to honour Open Fiber, an operator that has proven to be at the forefront of the FTTH rollout since its creation in 2016,” remarked Mr Raf Meersman, President of FTTH Council Europe. “Open Fiber’s achievements have had the merit of stimulating investment in FTTH technology in Italy, a key market for Europe’s digital competitiveness.”
“We are proud to receive this award, which recognises Open Fiber’s significant contribution to Italy’s progress in digital infrastructure. Until a few years ago, Italy lagged far behind the European average,” said Mr Giuseppe Gola, C.E.O of Open Fiber. “However, users need to use networks to achieve digitisation, and Italy still has some catching up to do. Switching off the copper networkNetwork In computer language, the term network defines a set of hardware and software devices which, when linked together, enable the exchange and sharing of resources, data or information. In a computer network, the devices that generate, route and terminate data are called network nodes. and migrating to fibre, as recently assumed by the European Commission, would make it easier to attain the gigabit connectivity targets set by the EU while ensuring a reliable return horizon for private investment in deploying ultra-fast networks.