Digital Salento: ultrafast broadband completed in 116 municipalities, a

Digital Salento: ultrafast broadband reaches 116 municipalities

Open Fiber has completed the Piano Italia a 1 Giga deployment in the provinces of Brindisi, Lecce and Taranto, connecting more than 213,000 addresses across 116 municipalities. The infrastructure is mainly FTTH (fiber to the home/building), with a residual share served by FWA to reach the most challenging locations.

Beyond faster connections, the upgrade offers tangible opportunities for the cultural sector in the Salento area.

• Digital access to heritage: museums, libraries and archives can provide high-definition virtual tours and fast, searchable online catalogues.
• Hybrid events and streaming: festivals, concerts and cultural programs can reach wider audiences with improved audio-video quality.
• Research and preservation: faster transfers enable large-scale digitization projects, secure backups and data exchange between institutions.
• Creative economy opportunities: young cultural entrepreneurs, audiovisual productions and digital startups can benefit from stable, high-speed connectivity.

Open Fiber notes that these works complement previous interventions under the Piano BUL, which had covered more than 51,000 housing units in the area. As Valeria Carrozzo, Open Fiber's Institutional Affairs representative in Puglia, pointed out, 'The priority now is to increase fiber adoption'—turning infrastructure into accessible services for citizens and cultural operators.

The next step will be on the supply side: local administrations, cultural institutions and tourism operators need to develop digital offerings, literacy programs and hybrid projects to fully exploit the advantages of ultrafast broadband.