Lepida has been a pioneer in funding and operating its publicly owned high-speed network, starting in 2007 when the Emilia-Romagna Regional Government began to design, implement, and manage broadband infrastructure for the region's public administrations and public entities.
Since then, Lepida has grown to provide a full range of services, including digital healthcare applications and support of education and public safety as a membership and mission-driven organization.
The Company's purpose is to carry out the establishment of an aggregator pole to support regional ICT (Information Communication Technology) development plans in terms of design, research, development, testing, and management of ICT services and products, as well as activities for the creation, maintenance, activation and operation of infrastructures. They work together to develop services for citizens, businesses, and public administration, with a highly specialized line in the sectors of health, social assistance, services of local authorities to the person and social health services and are building smart cities and promoting remote working, especially timely and important during the COVID-19 crisis.
Earlier this month, Lepida selected Ribbon Communications Inc., a global provider of real-time communications software and packet and optical transport solutions to service providers, enterprises, and critical infrastructure sectors, along with its partner TIM to expand the capacity of Lepida ScpA's regional broadband network. The solution leverages Ribbon's Apollo product line.
"Public administration entities have seen their bandwidth requirements grow exponentially due to accelerated digitization and COVID-19 related restrictions. Our challenge has been to quickly deliver the increased capacity and additional bandwidth our customers need," said Professor Gianluca Mazzini, CEO, Lepida. "Working with Ribbon and TIM enabled us to rapidly expand our network capabilities with a flexible, scalable, and configurable solution and provide our customers with value-added encrypted services."
Ribbon is adding selectively encryptable Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel services and providing Lepida with enhanced connectivity between the region's main POPs and data centers with 200G flexgrid protected lambdas. The network is based on a mesh of interconnected rings leveraging Apollo 9600 ROADMs (Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexer) throughout and 9900 series OTN switches at hub nodes to ensure efficient resource allocation and accelerate end-to-end service provisioning.
"Lepida performs a vital function in Emilia-Romagna, and the provisioning of bandwidth services has only become more critical with increasing demands due to the pandemic," said Barak Eitan, Head of South Europe, Ribbon. "Our advanced Optical Transport Networking (OTN) solutions and our partnership with TIM enable Lepida to continue to perform its mission in these unprecedented times."
The Apollo family of optical transport and switching platforms interwork to provide scalable, high-density, and energy-efficient solutions from access to core. Apollo enables service providers to deploy programmable and open optical networks that lower the cost per bit while simultaneously providing packet services, high-efficiency end-to-end operations, and SDN applications.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle
