Fastweb + Vodafone inaugurates the Innovation Hub within SmartCityLab Milano

Fastweb + Vodafone becomes the unique telecommunications-sector partner of SmartCityLab Milano, the City of Milan's space devoted to innovation and technological experimentation for the Smart City, today inaugurating the Innovation Hub. Within the premises at via Ripamonti 88, the Hub will make available to businesses, startups and citizens the most advanced technologies – 5G, IoT, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity – as well as its expertise in the design and development of innovative solutions.

Fastweb + Vodafone thus joins an ecosystem that supports startups and businesses with specialist expertise, collaborating to test scalable and replicable solutions and services for the smart city of tomorrow. The aim is to place the most advanced technologies at the service of society, so as to generate concrete and tangible benefits for citizens, businesses and the local area.

The presentation event of the Fastweb + Vodafone Innovation Hub

The Innovation Hub presentation event was attended by Layla Pavone, Coordinator of the board for technological innovation and digital transformation of the City of Milan; Lucia Scopelliti, Director of the DP Urban Economy, Fashion and Design of the City of Milan; Alessandro Magnino, Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer of Fastweb + Vodafone; and Luca Chiodaroli, Digital Innovation Partner of PwC Italia, representing the RTI (Temporary Grouping of Enterprises) that manages SmartCityLab Milano.

"SmartCityLab Milano was established a year ago through a synergistic partnership of institutional stakeholders, both local and national," states Alessia Cappello, Councillor for Economic Development and Labour Policies. "The project presented today with Fastweb + Vodafone consolidates the Administration's commitment to Smart City matters, in continuity with the Smart City and Extended Digital Twin initiatives. The Smart City Lab confirms its vocation as a meeting place between institutions, businesses, startups and innovators, creating the conditions to transform ideas and technologies into concrete projects for the benefit of the city."

Layla Pavone, Coordinator of the board for technological innovation and digital transformation of the City of Milan, commented: "The opening of the Fastweb + Vodafone Innovation Hub represents an important step in the growth of SmartCityLab Milano as an infrastructure serving the city's digital transformation. Making enabling technologies such as 5G, Artificial Intelligence and Cloud available to startups and businesses means concretely accelerating the time between an idea and its real-world application, within an ecosystem where the public and private sectors collaborate towards the same goal: making Milan a permanent laboratory of innovation at the service of citizens and the local area."

Alessandro Magnino, Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer of Fastweb + Vodafone, declared: "Innovating means transforming an idea into a concrete, scalable business project capable of generating value for the local area. This is why it is important that startups and companies can test, validate and evolve their solutions in a technological environment such as the Innovation Hub we are inaugurating today within SmartCityLab Milano, the City of Milan's space dedicated to innovation. In this space open to experimentation and collaboration, Fastweb + Vodafone makes available to startups and businesses cutting-edge connectivity and technologies such as 5G, Edge Computing and Artificial Intelligence. When technology is designed to be genuinely useful in people's everyday lives, and can develop within a system where companies and institutions work side by side, a context is created that is capable of generating real impact and delivering positive effects across every sector."

The overall management of SmartCityLab Milano has been entrusted to an RTI formed by a multidisciplinary network of companies with expertise in innovation. PwC Italia takes on the role of lead partner, supported by LifeGateWay, LifeGate, Underdogs, Webgenesys and Designtech. From this cross-pollination of skills comes a rich, innovative offering aimed at businesses, Public Administration, Institutions, new entrepreneurial figures and citizens.

Luca Chiodaroli, Digital Innovation Partner of PwC Italia, states: "In its first year of activity, SmartCityLab Milano has proven that it can become a strategic infrastructure for the city's innovation ecosystem. The project was born with a clear mission, shared with the City of Milan, and, buoyed by the results achieved, we are convinced that these objectives are taking shape. As a certified incubator and accelerator, we launched the HUMAN + AI programme, guiding ten startups along a growth path, with an equal number selected for the programme starting in September. As an experimentation laboratory, we have permanently integrated 6 innovative technologies, offering a concrete space in which to test solutions for the city of the future. And, as a centre for the promotion of urban innovation, we have hosted over 80 events, transforming SmartCityLab Milano into a point of reference for dialogue among the key players of the ecosystem. These achievements represent a starting point, not a finishing line. Our ambition is to consolidate SmartCityLab Milano as a permanent platform for urban innovation, capable of attracting expertise, investments and experimentation, helping to strengthen Milan's international positioning as a city of innovation and a laboratory for sustainable development."

The technologies and startups at the Innovation Hub

Within the Fastweb + Vodafone Innovation Hub, the 5G network and fibre optics become the connectivity foundation upon which to build solutions for the smart city – from mobility to sustainability, from urban security to citizen services. The other technologies – 5G, Multi-access Edge Computing, Mobile Private Network, Fastweb AI – are available to startups and businesses that wish to test their solutions in real-world environments with the support of experts.

The inauguration of the Innovation Hub forms part of Fastweb + Vodafone's strategy of investing in innovation and supporting startups and companies in their growth projects, as already happens with NeXXt Ventures, the Fastweb + Vodafone Corporate Venturing programme that combines strategic investments, the incubation of new enterprises and system-wide collaboration to drive innovation in Italy.

The presentation event was attended by several startups that have used and are using Fastweb + Vodafone technologies to develop their projects and bring them to market. Among these: GridShare, a startup in the renewable energy sector that enables people to invest in photovoltaic plants and become owners of portions of solar parks; Mama Insurance, the first AI-native Managing General Agent (MGA) in Italy, which develops and distributes personalised insurance policies in a fully digital manner; and NextMindLab, the Fastweb + Vodafone spin-off startup that developed ROSS, an agentic Artificial Intelligence assistant that acts on behalf of the user by integrating with everyday productivity tools.

During the event at SmartCityLab Milano, a number of technologies were also demonstrated in action: AI Safety 4 Smart Mobility, the interoperable and replicable platform capable of optimising urban traffic flows with particular attention to vulnerable users – pedestrians and cyclists; Fastweb Power Control, the smart plug for reducing energy consumption through the intelligent monitoring of one's household appliances; and FastwebAI Suite, the Artificial Intelligence-based platform for enabling the digital transformation of Italian companies and Public Administration bodies.