Telecom Italia is an Italian telecommunications company which provides telephony services, mobile services, and DSL data services. It was founded in 1994 by the merger of several state-owned telecommunications companies, the most important of which was Società Italiana per L'Esercizio Telefonico p.A., (known as SIP, from the earlier Società Italiana per l'Esercizio Telefonico), the former state monopoly telephone operator in Italy.