The CDP Group/Enel company will invest 90 million euros for fiber optic cabling of 80% of city, with significant impact on employment
OpEn Fiber, the company owned jointly by CDP and Italy’s biggest electricity utility, Enel, will invest 90 million euros connecting Sicilian regional capital Palermo with ultra-broadband fiber optic cables, wiring hundreds-of-thousands of buildings with high-speed internet connections.
The Milan-based company, founded last year, will connect 80 percent of the city, or 224,000 of 280,000 buildings, with 2,000 km of fiber optic cables. About 1,000 workers will bring a ultra-wide network to about 50% of buildings by December 2017 and the remainder by April 2019, positively impacting employment and telecommunications infrastructure. The high-speed network coverage is expected to stimulate Palermo’s economy.
The Palermo project is one of a series of initiatives. OpEn Fiber will also spend 70 million euros on ultra-wide fiber-optic networks in Catania, followed soon by investments in Bari, Cagliari, Florence, Genoa , Naples, Padua, Perugia and Venice within the first half of 2017. The project will be completed by 2020 connecting 10 million customers throughout Italy.