Wind tre

Wind Tre SpA
legal form	Società per Azioni
founding	December 31, 2016
Seat	Rome , Italy
management	Jeffrey Hedberg, CEO
Number of employees	6,800 (2018)
sales	EUR 5.6 billion (2018)
Branch	Telecommunications , cellular communications , Internet and cable television
Website	https://www.windtregroup.it/

Wind Tre is an Italian telecommunications company based in Rome . The company offers mobile communications , landline networks , Internet and cable television via IPTV and, according to its own information, has over 30 million customers. On the Italian market, Wind Tre, together with Telecom Italia and Vodafone Italia and Iliad Italia, is one of the four Italian mobile network operators. At the end of 2019, Wind Tre had 31.3 million customers.

Company history

Wind Tre arose from a joint venture of CK Hutchison Holdings , then owner of H3G , and Veon with its former subsidiary Wind Telecomunicazioni . On August 6, 2015, CK Hutchison and VimpelCom announced the merger, which was approved by the European Commission on September 1, 2016 and later by the Ministry of Economic Development in Italy on September 25, 2016 . The merger was officially carried out on December 31, 2016. At the time of the merger, it was one of the largest corporate mergers in Italy since 2007. This also created Italy's third largest mobile operator. Wind Tre is wholly owned by Wind Tre Italia SpA , controlled by VIP-CKH Luxemburg S.à rl On June 23, 2017, the company announced that Jeffrey Hedberg would become its new CEO, replacing Maximo Ibarra. CK Hutchison Holding has been the company's sole shareholder since 2018. On June 15, 2019, Wind Tee and Fastweb announced a future cooperation with regard to the respective infrastructure. The new Wind Tre brand was officially released on March 6, 2020, and brands 3 and Wind were discontinued.

Cellular network

Current

Suppliers: 60% ZTE; 40% Ericsson
Transmitting systems: 19,000 - 20,000
Frequencies: 800 + 1800 + 2100 + 2600 LTE, 900 + 2100 UMTS, 900 GSM
Network IDs: 22288 + 22299
5G expansion: hardly prioritized
4G: No dense network, hardly any small cells / microcells; Many frequencies per transmitter
3G: Active across the board despite partial shutdown. No complete shutdown planned.
2G: Active across the board despite partial shutdown. No complete shutdown planned.
Connection: Mainly directional radio, fiber optic expansion in progress

Netzfusion: Chronicle

At the beginning of 2017, Wind Tre still had separate networks. The Tre network was based exclusively on technology from Ericsson and antennas from Kathrein and Cellmax. At that time, LTE was only available within cities on 1800 MHz and more rarely on 2600 MHz. UMTS was always broadcast on 2100 MHz, in some places also on 900 MHz. 2G-GSM was not broadcast by Tre transmitters, but a roaming agreement was made with TIM, which was limited to 2G. The network had significant gaps and was absent, especially in sparsely populated areas.

Wind, like Tre, also had hardly any rural LTE coverage. LTE was mainly broadcast on LTE 800, LTE 2600 hardly existed. UMTS 2100 and 900 were active throughout Italy, thanks to a consistent expansion strategy around 2015, almost nationwide and on all transmission systems. 2G was mainly broadcast on 900 MHz, within larger towns, GSM 1800 was often also sent, which, however, was continuously switched off due to the decreasing number of users. Wind bought the technology for northeast Italy and Rome also from Ericsson, for the rest of Italy from Nokia and Huawei . The majority of the radio antennas at the Winds transmission sites come from Huawei and Kathrein.

In the years before the merger, Wind and Tre both prepared their base stations for the upcoming LTE network, but it was rarely effectively activated and the expansion of UMTS 900 was prioritized over the upcoming standard. During this time, Wind also put new, previously not rented transmitters into operation, while Tre mainly renewed and expanded existing transmitter systems.

In 2017, Wind Tre initially relied exclusively on ZTE for its network expansion , and since 2018 - depending on the province - technology from Ericsson has also been used. Existing base stations will be converted to the hardware of these two providers. Antennas are bought from Huawei, Kathrein, Mobi and Comba.

UMTS and GSM have been partially switched off since 2018 in order to be able to activate LTE 1800 + 2100 in larger bandwidths.

The conversion of all base stations to the new hardware should be completed in early 2020, there is still some optimization work to be done, and then the network merger will be finally completed.