WINDTRE’s major network refresh with Juniper to scale to meet customer demands and ensure a stable, smooth and secure internet and 5G experience for subscribers

MILAN, Italy – April 14, 2025 – Juniper Networks, a leader in secure, AI-Native Networking, today announced a project with WINDTRE,  the Italian operator offering connections, energy and insurance products, to deploy network infrastructure and offer advanced 5G services to customers. Together with its partner Sirti Digital Solutions, Juniper is supporting WINDTRE in migrating to a distributed services architecture for its IP edge followed by an IP backbone refresh to ensure greater network capacity for WINDTRE’s services and improved resiliency.

WINDTRE ensures more than 97 percent of its customers in Italy are covered with 4G/5G mobile services, whilst providing landline and internet from 20,000 points of presence. With increasingly advanced digitalization, WINDTRE has seen a dramatic increase in network traffic which has resulted in the need for a network refresh to further expand its 5G capabilities. In Italy for the past 4 years, the average daily mobile traffic amongst all carriers has increased on average 28 percent per year and traffic on fixed networks has increased between 8.5 -19.9 percent per year. Increased use of streaming services by mobile and internet customers has meant that WINDTRE needed to create a reliable, high-performance core and edge infrastructure that can scale to meet customer demands and ensure a stable, smooth internet and 5G experience.

Transforming the IP edge network to a distributed services architecture is the first planned phase of the network refresh to deliver greater capacity on the network, supporting more mobile customers, devices and traffic. Following this, WINDTRE is planning to upgrade its IP core network, internet gateways and network termination points starting from mid-2025. Juniper solutions will be used for scalable growth, multiservice agility and security, with a readiness for 400GbE.

News Highlights:

• Juniper Networks® PTX Series Packet Transport Routers are used as the spine gateway nodes to allow easy scaling of the whole POP architecture.
• Juniper MX960 and MX10004 routers are deployed as Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) leaf nodes, allowing evolution toward a disaggregated approach with a separate control plane running as cloud-native application and the user plane component continuing to run on Junos OS on a dedicated hardware platform, using Broadband Network Gateway Control and User Plane Separation (BNG CUPS) architecture.
• In addition to MX Series Routers, ACX Series Routers are used for the aggregation of the PoP's low-speed connections..
• Juniper Networks SRX Series Firewalls integrating networking and security into a single platform are used to perform Carrier Grade Network Address Translation (CGNAT) in WINDTRE network in order to preserve its IPv4 addresses and efficiently support more subscribers and devices.
• WINDTRE is upgrading Juniper MX960 routers with new linecards to support higher traffic volumes and security requirements, while preserving the investment in Juniper solutions and operational experience.

Supporting Quotes:

"WINDTRE is committed to enhancing the quality of our network to deliver unmatched customer experiences. The latest collaboration with Juniper allows WINDTRE to dynamically scale our infrastructure and maintain the robust performance that customers expect. This major upgrade is a crucial step toward our strategic goals for 2025 and beyond, preparing us to seamlessly integrate advanced capabilities enabled by the 5G standalone network.”

- Carlo Melis, CTO, WINDTRE

"Juniper Networks is proud to support WINDTRE on this transformative project. Juniper’s technology is built to effectively scale and meet the demands of WINDTRE’s large subscriber base but also anticipate future growth and service needs. This project exemplifies our mission to provide robust network infrastructure, equipped with the latest networking advancements to aid better security and efficiency, ultimately making every connection count."

- Stefano Andreucci, Head of Service Provider Italy & South Europe, Juniper Networks

About Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks believes that connectivity is not the same as experiencing a great connection. Juniper's AI-Native Networking Platform is built from the ground up to leverage AI to deliver exceptional, highly secure and sustainable user experiences from the edge to the data center and cloud. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net) or connect with Juniper on X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Juniper Networks, the Juniper Networks logo, Juniper, Junos, and other trademarks listed here are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Media Relations:
Chloe Brown
Juniper Networks
(+44) 903 746 867
chloeb@juniper.net