TURIN, Italy -- Turin will be the first Italian city and one of the first in Europe to have a new 5G mobile network. The project entered the operational stage today thanks to a Memorandum of Understanding signed by TIM and the Municipality of Turin.

By 2018 in Turin, where TIM's innovation and development centre is based, the first 5G technology trial in a metropolitan area will be launched with the aim of driving the development of a new generation mobile network, confirming the company’s commitment to mobile innovation, a role that it also plays at global level contributing to the definition of the 5G standard.

The “Turin 5G” project includes the gradual extension of the new mobile broadband infrastructure to the municipal urban area with the aim of covering the entire city by 2020.

Thanks to this memorandum, TIM plans to install, as early as 2017, more than 100 small cells in the main areas of the city, including Via Roma, Via Po, Via Garibaldi, Via Lagrange and Piazza Vittorio, in the Quadrilatero Romano, and in the areas where the Polytechnic University and University of Turin are located. These small cells will be in addition to the 200 mobile ultrabroadband sites which TIM will use to guarantee the best radio coverage in the city. The new mobile network will be supported by TIM's optic fibre infrastructure which already covers almost the entire city.

With this initiative, Turin will be nominated by TIM as the first Italian 5G city to become the preferred location for the activities envisaged in the 5G Action Plan of the European Commission, which aims to speed up development by launching trials and later public use of the new technology starting with the main metropolitan areas. Turin will therefore become part of the first pan-European network of 5G interconnected cities.

The trial will involve up to a maximum of 3,000 users who will be able to take advantage of very high performances and transmission speeds and experimental services and applications, provided by the city administration and made possible by TIM’s 5G network.

Telecom Italia (TIM)