Italy’s state-owned railway company Ferrovie dello Stato (FS) would be willing to share its network to accelerate a national fibre roll-out.In an interview with local daily La Repubblica, FS CEO Michele Mario Elia said that the company would be ready…
Italy’s state-owned railway company Ferrovie dello Stato (FS) would be willing to share its network to accelerate a national fibre roll-out.
In an interview with local daily La Repubblica, FS CEO Michele Mario Elia said that the company 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.
He added that so far FS has not been approached to discuss the project.
The remarks follow news that Italian utility Enel has sent a letter of intent to telecoms regulator AGCOM on 14 April to express its interest in helping develop a national fibre network.
As anticipated by this news service last month, Enel, which is 25.5% owned by the Italian Economy and Finance Ministry, could share its infrastructure to ramp up nationwide deployment of a high-speed broadband network.
A person familiar with the situation had ruled out that the company would directly invest in the network project, but said that it held early-stage discussions to provide its 1.2km power lines and 450,000 power distribution cabinets, which could also host fibre optic cables.
The proposal, part of an ongoing public consultation whose results should be released by the end of the month, is likely to be favoured by the government, which aims to keep telecoms infrastructure in public hands for national security reasons.
Over the past few months, Matteo Renzi’s government, which launched a €12bn high-speed broadband plan in March, has held talks with former incumbent Telecom Italia (TI) over a public-private partnership with partly state-owned dark fibre operator Metroweb to accelerate a national fibre roll-out.
However, on Friday 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.
A partnership with Enel, which reportedly plans to develop the network within the next three years with the public funds due to be allocated under the broadband plan, would give the government an opportunity to reduce costs by through synergies and infrastructure sharing among utilities, while also reaching less populated areas.
Metroweb president Franco Bassanini also backed Enel’s involvement in the broadband plan, pointing out that Enel could be one of the candidates, alongside Metroweb and others, competing to bring fibre to areas that Telecom Italia has no interest in covering.
