The European Investment Bank (EIB) has confirmed two loans totaling €350 million to support TIM for the development of network infrastructure in Italy.

This includes €230 million in financing for 2021-2023 to support investments planned under TIM’s new Beyond Connectivity plan, and aiming to strengthen the backbone and regional fiber optic networks (including the IP backbone) to address the strong growth in traffic from fixed and mobile access networks and data centers.

The financing also partly supports investments related to the construction of new data centers in Milan and Turin by Noovle, TIM’s cloud and edge computing subsidiary, and in Greece by Sparkle, the group’s global operator, as well as the modernization of existing Italian data centers.

A second €120 million loan in 2021 will help develop 5G mobile phone infrastructure and comes in addition to an initial €350 million signed in 2019 to provide overall support of €470 million for this project.

EIB has financed TIM’s network deployment projects totaling €700 million between 2019 and 2021.