The new Italian strategy for ultra-broadband, developed by the Ministry for Innovation and Mise, is good, but no to the co-investment model between operators “which we have erroneously heard of” given that “it is not part of those that can be used for the allocation of public funds “. This was underlined by Francesco Nonno, Regulatory Director of Open Fiber in an interview with DigitEconomy.24, report of the Sole 24 Ore Radiocor and of the Luiss Business School. According to Nonno, as required by European rules, it is necessary to provide additional scores for those who adopt, like Open Fiber, the wholesale only model “because it is less distorting than competition”.
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According to Open Fiber, it is essential to monitor the commitments of the operators and, if necessary, to sanction them. The 1 Giga Italy plan envisages 3.8 billion to provide connectivity at one gigabit per second in download and 200 megabit per second in upload for 8.5 million real estate units in the black areas, where the presence of more operators is expected, and the gray ones where only one operator is required. In practice, the aim is to cover the properties that, following the new mapping, will not be reached by networks capable of providing at least 100 megabits per second in download. The launch of the tenders is expected between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first of 2022. In recent years, Open Fiber has been awarded the tenders for the white areas with market failure, a plan still to be completed.
How do you judge the government’s strategy that provides for the award of new tenders on gray and black areas by the second quarter of 2022? Is this a reasonable timing?
We think it is the right way. The new “Italian strategy for ultra-broadband” represents an organic path to provide the country with universal coverage with Gigabit-speed infrastructures and encourage migration to very high-capacity infrastructures, also with the use of vouchers that stimulate demand by favoring the process switch off from copper to optical fiber. The timing envisaged by the government for the assignment of the first tenders by the second quarter of 2022 corresponds to the minimum times to complete the process, a challenging objective that testifies the desire to accelerate as much as possible.