MILAN -- Prysmian Cables & Systems - a leading worldwide player in the energy and telecommunications cable market - has confirmed its position among the top global players in the telecommunications optical fibre and cables sector, with overall production of around 10 million km of optical fibre in 2010, equal to 5% of the total worldwide industry production, and with a significant growth on 2009.

As a manufacturer of optical fibre, Prysmian has two active plants for its production, in Italy and Brazil. The Group's technological and manufacturing centre of excellence is FOS Fibre Ottiche Sud, based in Battipaglia (near Naples) in Italy, one of the most advanced facilities in this sector. Prysmian concentrates most of its research and production activities in the field of optical fibre in FOS, which began its activity in 1981. These fibres are used in the manufacture of cables at the Prysmian's ten plants worldwide, supporting the development of the main telecom operators' broadband projects, from BT, Telefonica and Telecom Italia in Europe, to Verizon in America, to Asia and Oceania, where Prysmian partners with Bharti Airtel in India, Telstra in Australia and China Mobile. In particular, Prysmian has been recently chosen by the Australian Government and by the telecom operator Telstra for the development of the new national telecom broadband network.

Leveraging on its market and technological leadership, Prysmian is ready to play a leading role also in future broadband projects in Italy. After having deployed the first access optical cable network in Milan, together with Metroweb/Fastweb, followed closely by Rome, Florence and Bologna, Prysmian has been chosen as a partner for the new experimental national broadband projects launched by the country's main operators. In another important project, Prysmian worked with Fastweb,Vodafone and Wind to install its FTTH optical cables to more than 7,400 users at Fleming Hill in Rome in what was the first mass testing of fibre optic deployment in Italy. These have seen optical fibres installed into the existing duct infrastructure - demonstrating how high capacity broadband can be delivered in an economical and smart way.

The attention is now focused on the "Fibre for Italy" project which has been signed by Telecom Italia, Vodafone, Fastweb,Wind, H3G, Tiscali and BT in order to implement a new fibre optic network that will deliver 100 megabits/s connections. Italy, with Prysmian, has all the ingredients to deliver such a network, having the necessary know-how, technology and experience to give the country a proper NGN (Next Generation Network).

Prysmian SpA