9304 Little Umbrian company wins national Wimax auction

Until a couple of years ago, our computer was staggering-by on a lame Telecom Italia ISDN connection, with no chance of ADSL coming to our village. Then a couple of guys stuck a radio transmitter on Monte Peglia and gave our territory 'pre-Wimax' broadband over the airwaves, so that now we don't even need a phone line; just a small parabola on the house. Their company, AriaDSL, based near Marsciano, has just won the national auction to cover Italy with Wimax over the next 3 years... and they did it against the big players; Telecom Italia etc. Wimax is a point-to-point technology, which is to say that, as long there is a transmitter within about 50Km of you, you'll be able to get broadband directly on your computer, with no modem, phone line or dish. Sorry if this sounds like a plug for them, but its a real David and Goliath story and a great credit to their enterprising business.

There are some press releases on their web site;
[url=http://www.ariadsl.it/htm/press.htm]ARIA DSL - ADSL per navigare in Internet ad alta velocità ovunque[/url]

Category
Cost of living - Utility Services

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 04/11/2008 - 05:58

Good pun Marc - "plug"!!! Sounds a perfect solution. Any problems so far??? Is there something similar around here in the UK does anyone know???

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 04/11/2008 - 06:07

thats good news Marc ... both that wimax will be rolled out nationwide in a decent timeframe AND that a small, dynamic & innovative company won out against the vested interests. Fingers crossed that scaling up the transmission network doesn't break their business model .. and that the Italian bureaucracy doesn't break their spirit!

I've loked at Aria before, but refresh my memory ... do they offer a dedicated telephone service (over some portion of your wireless bandwidth) or do you just sort yourself out using a VoIP service?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 04/11/2008 - 11:23

AriaDSL offers a small box that plugs into your router that splits out a standard telephone connector for you to run your phone on. You can have your existing Italian phone number routed to the box through the internet, so your phone still rings as normal.

Regarding scaling-up; a billionaire technology investor from Isreal has taken a 75% stake in the company (I think he had a house in the area already) and they have formed an alliance with British Telecom for the equipment; not sure if that's a good, or a bad thing!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 04/11/2008 - 11:28

Is the Wi-max standard actually set yet?

While it sounds nice the small guys won the auction but one way of looking at is that the "big" guys didn't think it was worth the price. Locally this small town is being upgraded to 3g it seems. When I drive around I'm suprised how often I find a HSPDA signal. In three years how many users won't have access to something else? HSPDA,ADSL or even 4G?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 23:49

Mark,
May I ask about the reliability of the ARIA wimax service you have? We hope to commence building our house 5 kms from Todi in January. Obviously, ADSL via phone line is not an option. I was wondering whether we would even need a landline (we have Italian SIM cards for our mobiles and use those when we're there). It seems that the cost for a 4MB Up/down home service is about €35 a month.
Also, may I ask whether you use Skype on your connection and, if so, how is the quality of the connection?
I would be grateful for any information you can provide.

Also, there was an interesting story in the Corriere della Sera last month concerning who might really own ARIA - see this link -

[url=http://www.corriere.it/economia/08_settembre_03/internet_senza_fili_Gilo_c7a0bc02-7980-11dd-9aa0-00144f02aabc.shtml]Internet senza fili? Si scrive Gilo ma si legge Goldman Sachs - Corriere della Sera[/url]

Cheers
Tricia

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 10/26/2008 - 04:54

Marc I was thrilled to read about the success of Ariadsl. We have used this company for over a year and they operate from Foligno and we are situated near L. Trasimeno and face the right mountain so to speak. As I wrote re the Guardian journalist asking if Italy was up with broadband technology? Aria needs to invest in tecnico's and men who will come to your house. So this is early days but they, like Tiscali will get there for sure. Bravi.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 10/26/2008 - 06:01

[quote=Insonne;100843]Mark, May I ask about the reliability of the ARIA wimax service you have? [/quote]

Hi Tricia,

I've been very satisfied on the whole and have installed a few systems for other clients who are happy too. One friend of mine though has abandoned AriaDSL in favour of using a 3G Simcard device in his computer and says he gets up to 7.2 Mb (about 4 times the speed of AriaDSL' s present service) and bags of bandwidth for about the same price (€23/month), so Aria DSL will have their work cut-out competing.

I passed by AriaDSL's swanky new ofiice in Todi the other day (it's near the water tower on the 'high road' out of Todi from Bivio Cappuccini) and dropped-in to talk to them. Expensive cars parked everywhere and landscaped gardens etc. They say the Wimax service should roll-out before Christmas, but nobody knows when. The speed for base customers is projected to be 7.2MB.

I hope that they can maintain the present level of cusomter service in the new regime, because that is always the first thing to go when companies lose the plot or grow too fast. So far they have been good at dealing with problems.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 10/26/2008 - 06:38

WE are really happy with Aria DSL. We live north of Marsciano high in the hills near to Mercatello. When we bought our house we had no communications, the nearest telephone line was 3 km away!! We contacted Italia Telecom but got nowhere! THe costs to install a landline would be astronomical also wasted about a year to find this out their customer service is dreadful.

We now have an aerial on the roof (very discreet) which enables us to have full internet, a landline (VOIP) with 3 handsets we get good coverage throughout the house and vicinity , even though our walls are thick. Plus we have a Skype phone which we use primarily for cheap calls to England and free calls to other skype users. PLUS or telephone costs ARE REALLY Cheap.

So another satisfied customer!!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 11/15/2008 - 20:01

Thanks for the reply, Marc. We will be back in Todi in a couple of weeks (this is the third year in a row that we're leaving a Sydney summer for an Italian winter - and we don't even ski any more - however, if all goes according to plan the building should get under way early January). I'll follow up with Aria about their proposed 7.2MB Wimax service - we don't need it in the flat that we're currently renting because we have ADSL, however, it would be a huge relief if we could have a reliable and relatively fast Wimax service out at Canonica.

Cheers
Tricia

PS Sorry for the delay in replying - I've been away for the past couple of weeks!