Italian utility A2A would be interested in contributing to a national fibre roll-out, its chairman Giovanni Valotti said during an earnings call last week.
The company would be available to take part in the government’s high-speed broadband plan to…
Italian utility A2A would be interested in contributing to a national fibre roll-out, its chairman Giovanni Valotti said during an earnings call last week.
The company would be available to take part in the government’s high-speed broadband plan to help cover the areas where they are present, although the issue should be examined thoroughly, he pointed out.
Rival Enel submitted a letter of intent to telecoms regulator AGCOM on 14 April to express its interest in helping develop a national fibre network.
Enel, which is 25.5% owned by the Economy and Finance Ministry, said could share its infrastructure, which includes 1.2km power lines and 450,000 power distribution cabinets, to ramp up nationwide deployment of a high-speed broadband network.
Last week, an interview with local daily La Repubblica, the CEO of state-owned railway company Ferrovie dello Stato, Michele Mario Elia, said that the operator would be ready to provide its 9,000km railway network, a few hundred kilometres of which have already been covered with fibre optic cables by Milan-based Basictel.
The government, which launched a €12bn high-speed broadband plan in March, is likely to support such proposals, as it aims to keep telecoms infrastructure in public hands for national security reasons.
The plan also hints at the idea of reducing costs by optimizing synergies and infrastructure sharing among utilities, with a view to bringing fibre to less populated areas.
The potential bidders for the project, which will be partly funded with EU structural and development funds, would receive a number of incentives and tax breaks due to be set out in the coming weeks.
Over the past few months, Matteo Renzi’s government has held talks with former incumbent Telecom Italia (TI) over a public-private partnership with partly state-owned dark fibre operator Metroweb to accelerate network deployment.
However, TI CEO Marco Patuano said that talks between the parties collapsed since the government opposed its desire to secure full ownership of Metroweb, although TI had been willing to give the state a guarantor role to ensure equal network access to rival operators.
However, according to Stefano Vulpiani, a telecoms analyst at ICBPI, even if utilities are involved, telecoms operators still play a key role in carrying out the project.
