Telecom Italia (TIIAY) announced on Wednesday that it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Swisscom’s Italian unit Fastweb to co-develop 5G mobile access networks across Italy. Under the terms of the preliminary deal, the two companies will share deployment costs for at least 12,000 new 5G macro sites and collaborate on radio access network (RAN) integration. The partnership aims to accelerate coverage in 50 key urban centers—serving an estimated 20 million potential users—by the end of 2025. Each party is expected to contribute roughly €500 million to initial rollout costs, while technical teams will coordinate site planning, spectrum utilization and energy-efficiency upgrades to existing towers.

According to three sources familiar with the negotiations, Telecom Italia and Fastweb are on the verge of finalizing a mobile network-sharing agreement that could reduce combined 5G upgrade and operating expenses by up to 30%. The deal encompasses joint procurement of radio equipment—leveraging bulk orders to negotiate discounts of 15% to 20%—and shared maintenance operations across 14 regional clusters. By consolidating back-haul transport services and co-managing fiber backbones, the partners project annual opex savings of approximately €120 million starting in fiscal 2024. The network-sharing arrangement is also expected to free up capital for both companies to invest in value-added services such as private 5G slices for enterprise customers and fixed-wireless broadband offerings in rural areas.