3 Italia has launched an experimental outdoor WiFi service that enables customers to hand off seamlessly from its cellular network.

The mobile operator is offering a trial service, dubbed 3Wi-Fi, to 35,000 customers in the city of Monza. The trial, which will run until 20 November, is available to customers with smartphones or tablets based on Apple's iOS or certain flavours of Android. Users will have free data access in the city centre for the duration of the trial.

The announcement was made earlier this week by Italian fixed-line provider Fastweb, which is providing 3 Italia with access to its WiFi network in the city. Its WiFi hotspots are connected via the telco's fibre-optic network.

Fastweb has integrated its WiFi network with 3's UMTS and LTE infrastructure, enabling users to seamlessly hand over from one to the other. The user is automatically logged on to the Fastweb network and two-factor authentication means the connection is highly secure, Fastweb said.

"The integration between the WiFi network and the mobile network enables us to offer increasingly innovative and high quality services in terms of performance and security," said Dina Ravera, 3 Italia's chief operating officer, in a statement.

"With this innovative service, Fastweb is putting all the power of fibre at the disposition of the mobile operator to make its mobile users' browsing experience more powerful and satisfying," said Fabrizio Casati, director of Fastweb Wholesale.

"3 Italia has been a pioneer in understanding the advantages of fibre technology for a mobile operator and for its customers," he added. "We expect that its example will be followed in Monza and other cities."

Indeed, based on the results of the trial, 3 may decide to extend the service to other cities to boost indoor coverage in locations such as shopping centres, post offices and airports, and to increase capacity in high-traffic areas like sports stadiums, town squares and railway stations.

Fastweb pointed out that its fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) service is available in 23 cities in Italy and it is in the process of rolling out the technology in a further 80. It routes mobile data traffic from one of its access points, on lamp posts and the side of buildings, via its fibre network to 3's mobile network. It has installed 34 such access points in Monza.