Italian energy firm Enel is open to buying into Metroweb, CEO Francesco Starace has said. Telecom Italia and a Wind Telecomunicazioni/Vodafone partnership have also approached the Milan-based dark fibre provider, but no deal has yet emerged. The government in the meantime has gone ahead and launched Infratel, a vehicle that will oversee the country’s €12bn high-speed broadband plan
Italian energy firm Enel (BIT:ENEL) is open to buying into Milan-based dark fibre provider Metroweb, CEO Francesco Starace (pictured) has said. Telecom Italia (BIT:TIT), and an initial partnership between Wind Telecomunicazioni and Vodafon
Speaking on the sidelines of a presentation in Madrid, Starace was cited telling First Online: “Could we buy Metroweb? It’s possible, it’s one of our options. It does hold assets that could be useful for our business.”
Last May, Starace offered to allow fibre optic cables to run through Enel’s existing infrastructure, a move he said could slash deployment costs by 80%.
But as for competing with Telecom Italia for the asset, he said “It appears that they have been in talks with Metroweb for two or three years … so we’re not that anxious. We’re not going to get into a bidding war with them, though, that will not happen,” he said, emphasising that Enel will “never” enter the telecoms market.
According to Il Giornale, Starace said that Enel’s Open Fiber project would be ready in the springtime. He said the company is “also watching with interest the potential for buying into Metroweb, independently from its ongoing talks with Telecom Italia”.
Starace said he was also open to Wind and Vodafone joining the shareholding of Enel Open Fiber.
He was speaking at Enel’s rebrand launch at the headquarters of its Spanish subsidiary, Endesa. The former Italian electricity monopoly is 25.5% government owned.
Wind and Vodafone have said they would welcome other participants in their proposed broadband deployment consortium, but so far, Telecom Italia has said that it would prefer to lead any national project.
Having failed to secure partnerships with the telcos, the government has now set up Infratel, a vehicle that will manage broadband deployment using an investment of €4bn. The government plans to contribute €7bn towards the €12bn national high-speed broadband plan, with telecom operators to cover the remaining €5bn.