Fastweb inks 3 Italia MVNO deal

Italian broadband operator Fastweb, owned by Swiss telco Swisscom, has announced the signing of a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreement with cellco 3 Italia, the local unit of Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa. Fastweb, which controls over 70% of the Italian broadband market and is the it to offer mobile telephone services including voice, data and video to its residential and business clients, adding that the new mobile service would be launched in the second half of 2008. ‘Thanks to the scalability of the next generation network deployed by Fastweb, we are able to integrate the mobile service without heavy investment,’ said Fastweb’s CEO Stefano Parisi. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database, Fastweb had 1.476 million broadband subscribers at the end of September 2007.