OpNet: from connections to value for digital competitiveness – the Wholesale Castle Tour 2026 is coming

The Wholesale Castle Tour returns in 2026: now in its third edition, this travelling B2B event dedicated to the Italian telecoms wholesale market is designed to build a digital ecosystem capable of connecting operators, institutions and businesses. Once again, OpNet – the Wind Tre Group’s wholesale company specialising in solutions for telecoms operators and businesses in related sectors – will play a leading role in the initiative as the event’s main sponsor. The event, organised by 3events and also supported by Fastweb + Vodafone, Open Fiber, Fiber Telecom, ISP Billing, Naquadria, SG Solution and Studio Legale Gallotto, will also see the renewal of its media partnership with *Il Sole 24 Ore*.
The tour takes place against a national backdrop in which network availability remains an essential condition, but is no longer sufficient on its own to define the value of a telecoms service; factors such as the growth in data traffic, the roll-out of fibre and Fixed Wireless Access, the convergence of fixed and mobile networks, and increasing security requirements are shifting the focus towards a broader perspective.
It is during this transition that wholesale is taking on a more multifaceted industrial role. Not just access to networks and infrastructure, but a platform through which operators, multi-utility companies and cross-industry organisations can expand their offering, reach new segments, reduce operational complexity and accelerate time-to-market. In an increasingly specialised market, sharing scale, infrastructure and technological capabilities enables each operator to maintain its commercial freedom, its customer relationships and the distinctiveness of its market positioning.

The Wholesale Castle Tour 2026 has been created precisely to interpret this evolution and bring it to local communities. Following the 2025 edition, which focused on building the community and strengthening connections between stakeholders in the supply chain, the initiative is shifting gear: the aim is to activate the ecosystem, transform networking and content into collaboration, and demonstrate how technologies, processes and expertise can deliver tangible results for partners.
The Tour comprises three stops: on 15 October at Villa Andrea, within the Ville Ponti complex in Varese; on 5 November at Castello Bevilacqua, in the province of Verona; and finally, on 25 November at Villa Tuscolana, in Frascati, on the outskirts of Rome. Three different settings, all sharing locations of great symbolic value and designed to foster dialogue between national capabilities and local needs, whilst highlighting proximity as a key component of the wholesale model – including through an in-depth exploration of the various use cases across different regions.
The format expands the spaces dedicated to practical application: at each stop, the meeting lounge dedicated to one-to-one networking is once again complemented by the Spotlight Stage area, where interviews, testimonials and case studies will be featured. Alongside networking, the focus is on the quality of dialogue between carriers, vendors, distributors, service providers, local operators, multi-utility companies, system integrators, businesses and experts in market and regulatory affairs.

There are five narrative pillars that underpin the event as it travels the length of Italy. The first is competitiveness: connectivity creates value when it enables faster time-to-market, broadens the offering and serves new segments with levels of quality and scalability consistent with market needs. The second is complementarity: fibre, FWA, mobile, 5G, dedicated connections and transport technologies are not silos, but resources to be combined according to the customer, the region and the business model. The third pillar is resilience: security no longer concerns just the individual network, but the entire supply chain, and in this context, cybersecurity and business continuity become a shared responsibility and a source of trust between wholesalers and partners.
The fourth theme is proximity, understood as the ability to harness national scale to serve local specificities, with wholesale acting as the meeting point between infrastructure availability, specialist expertise and local market knowledge. Finally, applied innovation. The value of technologies such as 5G, advanced FWA, VoLTE, eSIM, IoT, automation and network APIs does not lie in their novelty per se, but in the possibility of making them accessible, integrable and replicable: innovation becomes relevant when it meets a real need and can be brought to market through simple and reliable processes.
In this context, OpNet, a wholesale company within the Wind Tre Group, acts as an enabler of the ecosystem. Its offering integrates fixed and wireless connectivity, mobile solutions, dedicated infrastructure and operational expertise, with processes designed for the wholesale market. The aim is not to replace partners, but to expand their possibilities: to provide scale, technologies and integration capabilities so that they can build services consistent with their core business and retain control of the customer relationship.
The Wholesale Castle Tour 2026 is therefore confirmed as the leading event for the sector, and in this edition it also becomes a travelling workshop in which scenarios, use cases, technologies and relationships are put to the test against a concrete question: how can wholesale help operators and partners to grow, innovate and better serve their markets? “From connections to value” means precisely this: moving from the availability of resources to the ability to transform them into services, collaboration and competitiveness for the entire digital supply chain.