Iliad has signed a deal with rival broadband operator Fastweb to extend its fibre offer in Italy as the French telecoms group taps into greater demand for ultra-fast connectivity.
Fastweb, which is the Italian business of Swisscom, will offer access to its fibre network across Italy, enabling Iliad to cover more than 10 million households by early next year.

Iliad entered the Italian fixed-line broadband market in January after shaking up the country’s mobile market with its low-cost offer in 2018.

The group, owned by French billionaire Xavier Niel, previously signed similar fibre deals with Telecom Italia and Open Fiber.

Fastweb is the leader in terms of the penetration of ultra-broadband connectivity services. At June 30th 2.296.000 residential customers subscribed UBB connectivity services, up 7 percent compared to previous year. 85 percent of the customer base uses connectivity with download speed from 100 Mb/s up to 1 Gb/s. 300.000 Fastweb’s customers are currently connected with speed of 2.5 Gb/s.

Fastweb’s Capex totaled 142 million euro in the second quarter and 299 million euro in the first half, equal to 25 percent of revenues, focused mainly on the development of high-performance networks, cloud computing and cybersecurity advanced services.