Wind Taps Huawei, Sirti for EUR1bnLTE Rollout

Wind Italy, the full-service telecoms provider owned by Russia’s Vimpelcom Group has announced that it will spend EUR1 billion (USD1.3 billion) on the deployment of its long awaited 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network over the course of the next five years. As such, the telco has hired Chinese vendor Huawei Technologies and Milan-based civil and network engineering firm Sirti to supply equipment and infrastructure services.

In August 2011 Wind secured frequencies in the LTE-suitable 800MHz and 2600MHz bands in the Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico’s (MdSE’s) spectrum auction, paying more than EUR1 billion for the combined frequency rights.