Ericsson Day Italy

The history of Ericsson in Italy began in 1918 together with that of FATME (Telephone Equipment Factory and Electrical Equipment), founded in Rome on 3 October 1918, when in Italy there is 1 telephone for every 500 inhabitants. 

The first FATME customers are the State Telephones, the Officine del Genio Civile and the Ferrovie dello Stato. They produce local battery-powered switchboards, battery-powered table devices, arresters, ringtones, valves, line switches, ammeters and other measuring instruments, intercommunicating systems for both internal and urban lines.

In 1931 Ericsson launched the first Bakelite desk phone in Sweden. It will be the Ericsson-FATME to bring in Italy the production of this type of telephone, becoming the first national company to deal with the technology of printing plastics and thermoplastics.

In the same years, SIELTE (Ericsson System and Telephone Installations Company) extends its field of action to the installation of networks. Thus, Ericsson makes a significant contribution to the improvement of telephone systems in our country.

In 1960 Via Anagnina became the headquarters of Ericsson in Italy , a very advanced campus.

It is in the mid-sixties that the SIP and the State Telephone Company decide to speed up the time to carry out the direct dialing throughout the national territory. The FATME, which now exceeds 3,000 employees, builds three new factories to meet the demand: the plants of Pagani (Salerno), Avezzano and Sulmona (L'Aquila) are born. Italy will make the national selection before France.

In the Seventies FATME produces and inserts for the first time in the Italian network electronic inter-city centers (AKE). The first AKE power plant came into operation in Palermo in 1975.

This result follows the strategic decision of the group to create an R & D division in Italy, initially dedicated exclusively to the adaptation of the equipment of the parent company to the Italian market, then gradually assuming the role of global competence center for the whole Ericsson. From 1978 the FATME Research and Development Department was born in Rome.

In 1982 FATME installed the first digital power station in Italy in Naples. It's called AX, and it will become the most widespread central in the world.

In 1984, with a wider installation of the AXE power plants in Italy, a fundamental change took place: it is possible to connect directly with the desired number, without going through the switchboard. We are entering a new era of telecommunications: the encumbrance of a digital plant is 7 times lower than an electromechanical plant, with at the same time a significantly higher level of efficiency. From now on the phone becomes available to everyone.

The nineties bring the news of mobile networks in Italy. The TACS network became operational in 1990 in all the cities hosting the football World Cup and on all the motorways connecting them. FATME supplies AXE telephone exchanges and the management system; Italtel and Telettra radio base stations, built under the Ericsson license.

The era of GSM began in October 1992: Ericsson is the technological partner chosen by the then SIP.

In order to move from a fundamentally business to consumer customer base, the "Family" tariff is invented by SIP / Telecom Italia, then the "prepaid card", an innovation made in Italy and then spread all over the world, launched in 1996 thanks to Ericsson.

In 2000 Tre is one of the five winners of the tender for UMTS frequencies in Italy; first, with Ericsson as a partner, he started building the third generation mobile network in record time, installing 2000 radio stations in just one year.

At the end of 2002, the Minister of Communications, Gasparri, made the first telephone call to the world on a third-generation commercial network on the Tre network.

The launch of UMTS to the public takes place on 3/3/2003.

In 2013 Ericsson entered the Guinness Book of Records, reaching the speed of 1 Terabit per second on the fiber optic network of Telstra, the leading Australian operator. The technology at the base is developed in the research center of Ericsson in Italy, in Pisa, in collaboration with the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies and the National Laboratory of Photonic Networks CNIT.

Since 2016 Ericsson has been launching, first in Italy, the experiments on 5G technology, with projects involving some of its most important customers in the cities of Turin, Rome, Genoa.

New record in December 2017 when, in the context of Turin Polytechnic, Ericsson and TIM carry out the first public experimentation of the 5G network, reaching speeds of 20 Gbps.