Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, recently announced that it has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Italy's Fastweb. According to this agreement, Huawei and Fastweb will collaborate in building next-generation (NGN) ultrafast broadband networks and researching advanced technologies. Huawei's senior vice president Ji Ping and Fastweb's general manager Alberto Calcagno attended the signing ceremony, apart from representatives from both sides. This agreement is part of the economic and trade cooperation project worth US$1.27 billion signed between China and Italy on that day.

Fastweb, a subsidiary of Swisscom, plans to invest 2 billion euros for technology innovations and developments within the next four years. According to its plan, Fastweb expects to provide ultrafast broadband access for 5.5 million households and businesses at the end of 2014, covering 20% of Italian population.

After thoroughly analyzing the broadband market competition in Italy and possible access technology trends, Fastweb nailed down a forward-looking broadband development strategy. According to this strategy, Fastweb will build 100 Mbit/s ultrafast broadband networks that use copper-based Vectoring technology and Fiber to the Curb (FTTC) solution. Huawei's Node Level Vectoring (NLV) solution can help Fastweb to accomplish this target. This solution provides vectoring for different devices located at the same site, ensuring ultrafast bandwidths accessible for all users while meeting regulatory compliance in terms of copper access. These ultrafast broadband networks can be upgraded to support G.fast technology in the future, which will further boost the copper bandwidth tenfold.

"The cooperation with Huawei, will bring new technological solutions in order to provide a growing speed on our networks breaking the wall of 100M per second currently achievable in VDSL. This is expected to be a long-term project: by 2014 it will reach 20% of the population with a network that supports up to 100M. In the second phase of our project the NGN will implement new technologies that will extend up to 10 times the bandwidth using the existing infrastructure, going beyond the objectives of the Digital Agenda. It is a commitment that Fastweb undertakes with its clients: to develop their services and their performance to offer the best Internet solutions in Italy, now and in the future. The partnership with Huawei was founded by a philosophy of active collaboration with our suppliers, which are the real partners. The agreement signed with Huawei is the first important MoU in the NGN and it will be followed by other agreements," said Alberto Calcagno, General Manager of Fastweb.

"Huawei will continue and strongly reaffirm its commitment in Italy. This agreement is another important example of investment in the technological excellence for the country. The availability of ultrafast telecommunications infrastructures, that are to be adequate to the top countries of the world, is a pre-requisite for the growth of Italy. This has also been emphasized by recent laws approved by the Italian Government and strongly hoped for by Huawei," claimed Roberto Loiola, Vice President of Huawei Western Europe.

Huawei is one of a few vendors in the world that continuously inject large amounts of investment in researching copper access technologies. Huawei is the first vendor in the industry to provide a Node Level Vectoring solution —an solution that methodically addresses issues in co-located equipment installation and supervision of leased copper lines. In Broadband World Forum Europe 2012, Huawei was awarded the Best Broadband Access Award – Fixed, which is one of the InfoVision Broadband Awards, for its large-capacity Vectoring system. Huawei also launched the industry's first G.fast prototype that provides ultrafast access at a Gbit/s level over a single pair of copper wires.

Huawei has ever topped the leaderboard in the global fixed broadband field for more than two consecutive years, according to the 2012 Q3 global access market share report released by Infonetics, a world-renowned consulting firm.