Telecom Italia and Huawei have announced a three-year cooperation agreement to create a Business Innovation Centre (BIC) in Italy with a view to developing innovative technologies and services, Telecompaper.com writes on Nov 17. 2014. The agreement was signed at Huawei headquarters in Shenzhen by Telecom Italia CEO Marco Patuano and Huawei’s rotating CEO Eric Xu, with the partners explaining that the BIC would seek to devise and make available new technologies for the Italian group’s consumer and business customers in both the fixed and mobile segments. Patuano said the focus would be on reducing time to market and searching for new business models, while Xu said the agreement consolidated Huawei\'s strategy of working alongside its partners to jointly develop innovation centers throughout the world.

Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore reported that the incubator would be based in Rome and that total funding for the project would be in the region of EUR 5-6 million. The two companies have already collaborated extensively on rolling out Telecom Italia’s LTE-A network throughout Italy.