Italo, agreement with Starlink for global connectivity at 300 km/h

In the high-speed rail market - where competitive advantage is no longer played out solely on the reduction of travel time, but also on the quality of time spent on board - Italo is placing its bet on Starlink. The private rail operator has signed a strategic agreement with Elon Musk's company, which provides Internet connections via satellite, to bring ultra-fast connectivity to its entire fleet.

Italo - owned 49.2% by the Aponte family's MSC Group and for the other 50% by the American fund Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) at 39.2%, together with some co-investors such as Allianz Capital Partners at 10.04% and a 1.56% owned by the former shareholders Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, Alberto Bombassei and Isabella Seragnoli - will lead the way in the high-speed sector in equipping each convoy with Elon Musk's satellite technology.

The industrial implementation plan is already outlined: the first sites for the installation of antennas on the roofs of the trains (both the 25 Agv 575s and the 26 Italo EVOs) will open around May, with the aim of completing the roll-out of the entire fleet by the end of 2027.

The technical challenge is not trivial: guaranteeing signal stability for a metallic object whizzing by at 300 km/h. However, tests conducted over the past year have provided data that have comforted Italo in this choice. Starlink's LEO (Low Earth Orbit) constellation made it possible to exceed speeds of 400 Mbps with a latency reduced to 25 milliseconds.

For Italo, the investment responds to an increasingly demanding market demand: the passenger, whether a business traveller on a call or a tourist watching a series in 4K, no longer accepts digital 'blackouts'. The results of the pilot phase - downstream of a year of experimentation - confirm the thesis: 85% of travellers who tested the satellite connection declared themselves fully satisfied, with over half of the sample assigning the highest rating (5 stars) to the navigation experience.