Italtel enhances ship-to-port communications for the Costa Cruises fleet

Milan, March 30, 2026 – Stable connectivity between ship and port is a key element for operations in the cruise industry. During each port call, within a limited timeframe, critical activities such as the check-in of thousands of guests are managed across complex port areas including quays, terminals, and offices. In this context, network continuity is essential to ensure efficiency and smooth operations.

To address this need, Costa Cruises has selected Italtel, along with Cisco technology, to develop an advanced wireless connectivity solution capable of ensuring continuous, secure, and low-latency communications between ship and port. The solution has been designed to overcome the limitations of traditional technologies, delivering reliable performance even in complex operational environments such as particularly busy ports or in adverse weather conditions.

The solution designed by Italtel is based on a “point-to-point/mesh” radio network, built using Cisco Ultra Reliable Wireless Backhaul technology, specifically engineered to operate in maritime and port environments and resistant to humidity, salt spray, and challenging operating conditions. The system creates a direct link between the onboard network and onshore infrastructure, allowing mobile devices used for check-in and the boarding of guests and crew to operate within a single integrated network environment, without the need for complex cabling or additional configurations.

The result is a significant increase in operational efficiency: check-in activities become faster and more reliable, the network ensures high availability, and it is easily scalable, flexibly adapting to different port layouts and enabling the integration of new mesh points without any interruption to operations.

Following deployment across the nine ships of the Costa fleet, Italtel is now supporting the customer in the development of an innovative portable kit designed to further speed up operations in port terminals.