Vodafone Italia said its LTE network covers 800 municipalities nationwide, including 300 holiday destinations, as of August, equating to 60 percent of the population, Telecompaper.com reported on Aug 11, 2014. The company will extend LTE coverage to 90 percent of the population by 2016 as part of its EUR 3.6 billion ($4.81 million) investment program, called “Spring”. In June, the company said it hopes to activate the service in 100 new Italian municipalities each month.

In February, the company launched trials of LTE Advanced, which will offer download speeds of up to 250 Mbps, in Naples, ahead of a planned 2015 commercial launch. By 2016, as part of the Spring program, Vodafone Italia plans to bring 3G HSPA+ services to 95 percent of Italians and expand its fiber-optic network to 7 million households, a quarter of the country’s population.