Fastweb, Qualcomm join forces to launch commercial 5GmmWave FWA in Italy

US chipmaker Qualcomm has joined forces with Italian telecommunications company Fastweb to roll out commercial 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) service over millimeter wave (mmWave) across the country, the companies announced in a joint statement.

As part of the collaboration, Fastweb's 5GmmWave FWA Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) devices will use the Snapdragon X55 Modem-RF System to bring the industry-leading performance and capacity of 5G mmWave to users in Italy, making it one of the first operators in Europe to launch commercial 5G FWA connections using mmWave network.

Commenting on the collaboration, Enrico Salvatori, senior vice president and president, Europe/MEA, Qualcomm Europe, Inc, said, "Qualcomm Technologies and industry leaders are at the heart of the 5G deployments being rolled out across Europe and this is the first 5G commercial mmWave deployment in the region. This new standard of connectivity will enable exciting new user experiences that will fundamentally enrich how we live our lives."

Fastweb will provide broadband connections to 12 million homes, 45% of the population of Italy, with speeds of up to 1Gbps by 2024. Households will be connected via a 5G CPE device mounted on the roof or side of the house that provides ultra-fast broadband service in-home. With this roll-out, the operator aims to close the digital divide in disadvantaged areas of the country.

Fastweb is launching its 5G FWA service over mmWave in 50 cities in Italy and will expand to 500 in 2021. The operator has 2.7 million wireline customers and 1.8 million mobile customers.

"We are very satisfied with the collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies which has allowed us to find the best technological solution to offer our service, said Andrea Lasagna, chief technology officer, Fastweb.