Research and innovation

TILab is the Telecom Italia Group Research Centre working to ensure the Group continues its tradition of technological innovation. TILab scouts for new technologies and engineers services and network platforms through a network of strategic partnerships with the major producers of equipment and systems for telecommunications. TILab also partners with top research organisations and the most highly qualified academic institutions on the Italian and international level.

During 2009, TILab worked to:

• the creation of services in the iPhone environment, in particular, access to information and multimedia content in the area of value added services (VAS). As part of this, version 2.0 of the Virgilio portal was successfully launched, enriched with maps and local content;

• the conducting of experiments with innovative fiber cabling solutions inside buildings (Fiber to theHome – FTTH);

• the start of engineering and deployment operations on 200 exchanges of the Kaleidos system for energy efficiency. Installations have been created to test the results of energy efficiency of business customers;

• an innovative solution for air conditioning in the exchange environments called Extraction and FullFree Cooling (EFFC) has been devised and tested in TILab’s test plant;

• the start, in partnership with the Miroglio Group, of the first initiative at national level for a fidelity card based on SIM, with Near Field Communication (NFC) proximity technology, which enables the use of the phone owner’s SIM as a Fidelity Card;

• the development, in collaboration with Nokia Siemens Networks, of the first “intelligent” antennas, capable of improving the performance of High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology. This equipment makes it possible to optimize the mobile radio base stations, improving the quality of the service offered to customers and, at the same time, guaranteeing less energy consumption and a reduction of electromagnetic fields;

• experiments in the field of LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology, natural evolution in accordance with the 3GPP standard of the HSPA technology currently in use;

• the release for operation of the converging contact centre platform for business customers;

• the completion of the adjustments of the mobile network to enable the retracing of attempted calls (Frattini decree);

• the release for operation of the advertising platform on the WAP and MMS services.

In the field of technology for voice synthesis, recognition and authentication, Telecom Italia operates through Loquendo, a European leader in the sector undertaking research and production.
Thanks to the contribution of the Future Centre, the field of research has expanded to include business ecosystems and the study of new businesses that are feasible within these ecosystems.