AS8968 BT-ITALIA

BT-Italia is the Italian network of BT Italia S.p.A., BT Group's Italian operating company. It is one of the larger ASNs in its range: roughly 824,000 IPv4 addresses across ~30 prefixes, with dozens of BGP neighbours.

What it's used for

• Corporate and public-sector connectivity, not consumer broadband. Every sampled address across 78.4.0.0/16, 85.20.0.0/16, 89.118.0.0/16, 89.119.0.0/16, 213.213.0.0/17, 213.255.0.0/17 and the rest resolves to a static name — 78-4-0-1-static.albacom.net, 89-118-50-10-static.btitalia.it, h213-213-100-10.pd1.albacom.net. There are no dsl-, pppoe-, dyn- or pool markers anywhere.
• Managed WAN, IP-VPN, voice and ICT services to Italian enterprises and government bodies.

Notable

• The rDNS still carries albacom.net, the name of Albacom, the Italian alternative carrier BT took full control of in 2005 and rebranded. The two domains sit side by side in the same blocks — a legacy operator's addressing rarely gets renamed.
• Size is a trap here. Nearly a million addresses on a national carrier's AS looks like an eyeball network; the inventory says the opposite. This AS is business, and it should not be treated as Italian consumer space.

Interesting

• BT sold its Italian domestic operations to Retelit in 2025. RIPE still records the AS to BT Italia S.p.A., so the registry name and the operating company behind the addresses may diverge for some time.