Iliad Italia facts for kids

Iliad Italia S.p.A. is an Italian company that provides phone and internet services. It is fully owned by a French company called Iliad SA.

By December 2022, Iliad Italia had over 9.5 million active phone lines. This makes it the fourth largest mobile phone company in Italy. It is behind Wind Tre, TIM, and Vodafone.

How Iliad Italia Started

Iliad Italia S.p.A. was created in 2016. It is the Italian part of the French group Iliad S.A..

In 2017, Iliad Italia started to get ready to launch its services. It bought special radio frequencies from Wind Tre. Wind Tre had these frequencies after two companies, Wind and 3 Italy, joined together.

The French parent company said it would invest a lot of money, over €1 billion, to start and grow the new mobile phone company in Italy. They also planned to hire about a thousand people.

Key Moments in Growth

On January 16, 2018, Benedetto Levi was announced as the head of Iliad Italia. They also showed their new logo and website.

To build its own network across Italy, Iliad Italia made a deal with a Spanish company called Cellnex. This deal, signed in February 2018, allowed Iliad Italia to use over 7,700 phone antennas in Italy.

Iliad Italia officially launched its services on May 29, 2018. They started selling SIM cards. Customers could get new phone numbers or keep their old numbers when switching from other companies.

Just two months later, on July 18, 2018, Iliad Italia announced it had reached one million customers! By early August, they had 1.5 million customers. By September 6, 2018, they had two million customers.

In the first half of 2021, Iliad Italia started making a profit. This was the first time they had a positive financial result since they began.

Expanding to Home Internet

On March 6, 2020, Iliad Italia received permission from the Italian government to offer public phone services.

Then, on July 7, 2020, they signed a deal to offer home internet services. They could use the Open Fiber network, which uses FTTH (Fiber To The Home) technology. This means super-fast internet directly to homes using fiber-optic cables.

They also signed a similar deal with FASTWEB on October 6, 2022.

On August 9, 2021, Iliad also partnered with FiberCop. This helped them expand their fiber internet service even more.

On January 25, 2022, Iliad officially launched its FTTH fiber optic internet service. It offers very fast speeds, up to 5 Gbps (gigabits per second) for downloading.

Iliad provides special internet devices called iliadboxes to its customers. These are modem-routers designed by the company itself.

As of January 2023, Iliad's mobile network in Italy had about 16,200 active sites. About 9,470 of these are Iliad's own sites. The other 6,730 sites are in less crowded areas. These are part of Zefiro Net, a company owned equally by Iliad Italia and Wind Tre.

SIMbox Machines

Iliad brought a new way to buy SIM cards to Italy called SIMboxes. These are like vending machines for phone SIM cards. They were first used in France by Free Mobile in 2014.

SIMboxes let customers sign up and buy a SIM card all by themselves. This makes it quick and easy to get started with Iliad.

Iliad's Network

Iliad is building its own 3G, 4G, and 5G networks. These are different generations of mobile technology that offer faster speeds and better connections.

While they build their network, Iliad also has an agreement with Wind Tre. This agreement allows Iliad to use Wind Tre's network for 3G and 4G services in some areas. This is called RAN sharing. They also have a roaming agreement for 2G services, which means Iliad phones can still work where their own network isn't fully built yet.

Iliad has made deals with companies like Cellnex (in February 2018) and INWIT (in February 2019). These deals help Iliad install its antennas on their towers.

Iliad Italia uses equipment from companies like CommScope to build its network. They are also working with Cisco Systems (since April 2019) and Nokia (since September 2019). These partnerships help Iliad build a very modern network in Italy, including its 5G network.

See also

In Spanish: Iliad Italia para niños