TELECOM ITALIA 2 – Four new islands are being built to cater to customers of an Italian mobile phone operator and DSL service.

Islands for TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile) and Alice, a DSL Internet service owned by telco company Telecom Italia, will feature a car racing circuit with cars and motorbikes, and a copy of the San Siro soccer stadium of Milano, with the same field size: 100 x 70 meters.

While some soccer stadiums, most notably KPN's Ajax Arena, and Inter of Milano have featured broadcasts of soccer games, Telecom Italia's sim promises the first full game soccer animation, using a script and a heads up display (HUD) so that users can actually play.

The Telecom islands have been created by ISN (Image Solutions Network), a project management firm with offices on a neighboring island. “We will organize real tournaments, both for soccer and for car and moto racing,” Mattia Crespi, ISN's CEO said. Alice offers online service selling videos on demand. Videos will be available at the Alice island for free, along with many videos taken from Dailymotion, an Alice video-sharing service similar to Youtube, Crespi says.

ISN and Telecom didn’t disclose the cost of the four islands. “The cost has been moderate and the islands allow us to experiment with these new forms of interaction with our users,” Paolo Perrella, marketing manager of Telecom Italia, said. “We are studying all the so-called Web 2.0 environments, with the main goals of learning their new technologies and using them to better communicate in every medium.”

Italy ranks seventh among countries with the most users logged in to Second Life, according to Linden Lab’s June metrics. Italians make up 5.46 percent of total users and 4.11 percent of total hours online. The total number of Italian-themed sims is estimated at about 100.

This story has been edited from its original version.