Italian fixed and wireless ISP Tiscali has given more details of its ongoing EUR40 million (USD43 million) rollout of time division duplex LTE (TD-LTE) technology. According to a report from Corriere delle Comunicazioni, Tiscali is looking to cover half of all households in Italy by end-2018. The firm has so far installed 160 TD-LTE antennae, which will rise to 500 by the end of this year and 1,000 within the next 18 months.
The 3.5GHz wireless broadband service, which Tiscali has dubbed ‘wireless fibre’, has already attracted around 15,000 subscribers, offering connectivity at up to 100Mbps. The ISP is looking to sign up one million customers using a combination of fixed and wireless technologies, targeting areas outside of the main urban centres where there is less competition from fibre providers such as Telecom Italia (TIM), Fastweb and Enel Open Fiber (EOF). In 2015 Tiscali merged with Italian wireless broadband provider Aria, which previously used WiMAX technology but had signalled its intention to shift to TD-LTE systems. The ISP signed an equipment deal with Huawei in September 2016.