Italy coverage

What the Italy numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 88 Mbps, tells you what a good moment looks like.

The tenth percentile, 24 Mbps, is the one that matters. It is the speed in the worst tenth of the day, when the cell above the station is full and everybody around you is on it too. A country with a high median and a low floor is a country that works beautifully right up until the moment you actually need it.

If the trip depends on video calls or tethering, plan around the busy figure rather than the typical one.

What happens in Italy when the network is busy

Congestion is not a fault, it is a Tuesday evening. The question is what your eSIM can do about it, and for most travel eSIMs the answer is nothing: one wholesale agreement per country, one network, and no way out except buying a second eSIM from somebody else while standing in the street.

Here, Orbislo traffic runs over Vodafone and TIM. When the network you are on degrades we move you to another one, mid trip, without you asking, and tell you afterwards rather than interrupting you at the time.

Mobile operators in Italy

• Fastweb + Vodafone: Fastweb + Vodafone led Italy's market for SIMs used by people at the end of March 2026 with 25.2 percent, and 30.3 percent of all SIMs including machine to machine lines, according to the regulator AGCOM.
• Fastweb + Vodafone, ownership: Swisscom completed its purchase of Vodafone Italia on 31 December 2024 and combined it with its Italian subsidiary Fastweb, planning to move Fastweb's mobile customers from rented capacity onto the Vodafone network.
• Wind Tre: Wind Tre held 23.6 percent of Italy's SIMs used by people at the end of March 2026 and 24.0 percent of all SIMs, second among operators for SIMs used by people on AGCOM's figures.
• TIM: TIM held 22.3 percent of SIMs used by people at the end of March 2026, and 25.1 percent of all SIMs once machine to machine lines are counted, according to AGCOM.
• Iliad: Iliad reached 16.1 percent of SIMs used by people at the end of March 2026, a gain of 1.0 point in a year. Virtual operators PostePay, CoopVoce and Lyca Mobile followed with 5.6, 3.0 and 1.4 percent.

Older networks in Italy

• Vodafone Italy began cutting back its 3G network on 25 January 2021 and completed the shutdown by 28 February 2021, combining the frequencies 3G had used with its 4G network.
• TIM completed its nationwide 3G switch off on 15 October 2022. Devices limited to 3G can still make calls and send texts over TIM's 2G network, but with very slow data, and voice over 4G needs VoLTE enabled in the phone's settings.
• Wind Tre began retiring 3G on 7 June 2024 by switching it off on the 2100 MHz band. 3G remains on 900 MHz alongside 2G for now, and a phone without 4G that supports neither 3G nor 2G on 900 MHz cannot make calls or send texts on Wind Tre.

5G in Italy

• Italy's 2018 5G auction covered the 694 to 790 MHz, 3600 to 3800 MHz and 26.5 to 27.5 GHz bands. TIM and Vodafone won the two most expensive 3.7 GHz lots, for 1.694 and 1.685 billion euros, while Wind Tre and Iliad each took one of the remaining lots for about 484 million euros.
• In the 2018 auction Iliad won the 700 MHz block reserved for a new entrant, TIM and Vodafone took two generic 700 MHz blocks each, and TIM, Iliad, Fastweb, Wind Tre and Vodafone each won a block at 26 GHz.
• On 27 August 2026 the ministry published the tender for the 24.25 to 26.5 GHz band, the lower part of 26 GHz, under AGCOM decision 232/25/CONS, aimed at high capacity, low latency 5G and fixed wireless access.

Network notes for Italy

• Italy had about 111.3 million active SIMs at the end of March 2026, of which 78.9 million were used by people rather than machines. More than 91 percent of those human SIMs are prepaid, and each used about 1.10 GB of data a day on average.
• The state funded Italia 5G plan targets areas where no operator would build on its own: new 5G sites in about 1,000 such areas with at least 150 Mbit/s down and 30 Mbit/s up, awarded to a consortium of INWIT, TIM and Vodafone for about 240 million euros.
• Together the two strands of the Italia 5G plan aim to enable coverage over 1,400 square kilometres of unserved areas and along 12,600 km of transport corridors and roads outside towns.
• From 1 January 2026 Vodafone Italia was merged into Fastweb S.p.A., and the business now carries on under the single company name Fastweb S.p.A.