Italian service provider Lepida shrinks digital divide

In Northern Italy’s Emilia-Romagna, Lepida is the principal public operator of the region’s information and communications technology (ICT) strategies and policies. Lepida’s network must connect every public administration agency in the territory (hospital, municipality, university, school, etc.) and provide seamless delivery of ICT services to these public entities. 

The last decade brought incredible digital growth to the regional operator. In response to greater customer demand, Lepida increased its network core to 100 GbE and expanded its data center. Furthermore, Lepida wanted to create a 2 layer backbone to extend mpls on 40 secondary PoP. To make the transition smoothly, Lepida turned to Juniper routing, switching, and security. 

Difficult geography limits the region’s Internet connectivity

Emilia-Romagna covers an area of 22,446 square kilometers, and more than half is hilly or mountainous.

With such challenging terrain, service providers were rarely able to offer high-quality digital services in the more remote regions. The unfortunate result was that not all citizens, schools, or businesses had the same great digital experiences that others enjoyed in Bologna, the region’s capital.

Lepida wanted to break that pattern and provide excellent digital experiences everywhere. 

In Lepida’s vision, everyone—no matter where they are located—can easily stream video, share large files, and browse the Internet. Improving digital experiences is especially important for schools and businesses. High-speed communications services also would spur growth, attracting students and businesses to the area.   

Lepida Challenge

SOLUTION

Lepida realizes easy, seamless transition to 100-GbE network core and MPLS extensions to edge

Lepida has steadily enhanced its network by investing in the latest secure, high-performance networking solutions from Juniper.

Lepida’s network spans 64,000 km of fiber, 2700 km of wired infrastructure, and more than 3000 points of access. With a 100-Gbps backbone, Lepida can offer from 2-Gbps to multiple of 10Gps guaranteed connectivity at its fiber points, and with an extended mpls backbone, Lepida can offer also more reliable and scalable service to its customers.

The Juniper MX960 Universal Routing Platform forms the core network. In its data centers, Juniper QFX Series Switches provide a flexible network fabric. The Juniper MX204 Universal Routing Platform extends secure bandwidth to local service providers. The metro networks use a combination of Juniper ACX Universal Metro Routers, Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches, and Juniper SRX Series Services Gateways. 

Lepida Solution

OUTCOME

Achieving digital equity for all

Businesses, consumers, and ISPs throughout Emilia-Romagna now experience faster speeds and improved connectivity.

“The time needed to upgrade the network was minimal and the benefits were many,” says Andrea Odorizzi, Head of Network Design at Lepida. “We like the scalability and reliability that is built into the Juniper platforms and appreciate the openness and programmability of the Junos operating system. Our stakeholder and ISP customers will be much happier with the additional capacity and improved connectivity.”

In the next phase, Lepida will connect schools across the region to improve collaboration among the institutions. Having a Juniper network will make it easier for Lepida to add additional services and solutions.

“We like simple and elegant networks design. Building this second layer mpls backbone connecting all secondary POP, makes our network more reliable, scalable and simplifies day-by-day service configurations: Juniper devices and Junos operating system give us these building blocks,” says Stefano Bonino, Head of Network Operations and Delivery.

Lepida Outcome

 

 

“We’ve taken a big step toward reducing the digital divide in our region. Now more people in Emilia-Romagna can fully enjoy and realize the positive impacts of high-quality ICT services from local administrations.”

Andrea Odorizzi Head of Network Design, Lepida

Anitec-Assinform - Associazione Italiana per l’Information and Communication Technology (ICT)  
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