Langa is an area with a chain of hills between 400 and 800 m high. This place is in Piemonte and it is included, for the largest part, in the province of Cuneo. It continues, going to the South-West, in the Monferrato until the Alps in Liguria. If we consider the river Belbo as a boundary line, the ‘low Langa’ is the part of the land on the left of the river, while the ‘high Langa’ is the other part, the wildest one with all the typical features of the valleys in the Alps.

The harshness of the territory – 218,74 kmq and 8053 inhabitants – has prevented Alta Langa from the access to broadband connection services, causing the so-called ‘digital divide’ which is widespread in several Italian regions, even though we are in full ‘technological era’.
Economy in Alta Langa is charcterized by a great number of small-medium enterprises working in handicraft, tourism and high quality agriculture. This is a very active area which strongly needs quick connectivity not only for leisure activities but also and above all for the development of the local productive system.

The mountain community Alta Langa promoted an ambitious project that allows the creation of the widest European region with broadband coverage in wi-fi mesh modality.
Thanks to the cooperation with UNCEM and BBBell - a provider from Turin in charge of bringing the connectivity at high speed, via radio to different villages in Piemonte - we were able to connect the Alta Langa 21 small villages through the N.A.A.W. technology, the innovative open source HW/SW system.

The analysis of the territory together with the understanding of its inhabitants needs has led us to the creation of a mesh wireless network based on the N.A.A.W technology with the aim of providing a total coverage of the area and developing a network where everybody can talk to each other.

If we had created a traditional wireless network, a repeater would have installed on the highest point of the area (either on a mountain or a pylon) to allow the transmission of the signal in schools, offices, private houses and other places which could house CPE (Customer-Premises Equipment) in order to use the services offered by service providers.

• from an economical and ecological point of view, because of the fact that the number of devices connected to the ‘source antenna’ in point-multipoint system has been deeply reduced. The N.A.A.W devices are able to create autonomously a mesh network thanks to their autoconfiguration capacity.
• the meshing provides automatically connectivity to the devices close to the hubs which are part of the network, without having the necessity of a CPE for each user. Thanks to this feature, it’s possibile to provide a pervasive wireless coverage able to guarantee connectivity everywhere both indoor and outdoor.
• the N.A.A.W wireless network created in this way is scalable and can also be expanded according to the increasing needs of the territory and its development.

With the exclusive technology N.A.A.W, Wi-Next gives a concrete and successful answer to the evolution request of Alta Langa, helping the Community in the daily struggle against digital divide by providing access always and everywhere.

Thanks to N.A.A.W., Alta Langa is able to assure to its 21 villages a convenient and effective Wi-Fi connection.