The challenge for ultra-fast Internet has begun. “The first goal is to give 30 Mega ultra-fast bandwidth to everyone by 2020. The second goal is to give 100 Mega Internet access to 50% of Italians by the same date”. The prime minister gave the kick-off to the digital revolution and wanted to underline: "The future has also arrived in Italy, infrastructures are the symbol of this restart". And ultra-fast broadband is a strategically relevant part of the programme. So let's start with Enel, Vodafone and Wind in a project that for now does not see Telecom Italia participate but who knows tomorrow and which is born "open to all operators".
BROADBAND EVERYWHERE
“The theme is broadband everywhere. The first season tickets for Perugia will be ready from May,” Renzi said. "It is a period in which they tell us that unblocking public and private works can be a potential problem, I say that the only problem Italy has is that of not unblocking the hundreds of public and private works that we have to restart . The public and private works on which we are working are our key figure. I tell those who cause controversy that the Government is here, we are here for this, to unblock the works, including broadband", Renzi began at the press conference in Palazzo Chigi which was attended by Enel's CEO as well as the top management of Vodafone and Wind (respectively Aldo Bisio and Maximo Ibarra), the managing director of Enel Open Fiber Tommaso Pompei (who was at the time at the top of Wind and launched it on the market) and the mayors of the first five cities involved.
Enel will not stop dealing with energy, guaranteed Renzi who actually underlined its leadership in the most innovative renewable productions (particularly in Nevada and Chile) but will take advantage of its avant-garde technological capacity in digital meter technology to broaden the front also to ultra broadband. Starace himself explained that thinking about the new meters gave rise to the idea of exploiting the opportunity to bring fiber to homes and businesses with widespread distribution such as that of the electricity grid (32 million new meters, in fact), a cost reduction estimated in the order of 40%, a consequent reduction of the investment necessary for cabling and shorter realization times.
Thanks to the agreement with Enel, Vodafone Italy "Over two million customers will migrate to the network set up by Enel", clarified the CEO Aldo Bisio, explaining that the one signed with the electricity group "is an important partnership" that goes beyond the commercial dimension and "brings Italy to avant-garde in the development of fiber-port services. Bisio also underlined that "in the future digital age, the "M" of Megabit stands for medieval, while the "G" of Gigabit stands for Growth, growth" in strong discontinuity with the past. Also for Wind, said Ibarra, the agreement with Enel "is significant" and will improve the group's competitiveness in Italy.
HERE COMES THE CALL FOR DISCOMFORTED AREAS
Enel's plan will have Vodafone and Wind as commercial partners, ie interested in using the new network that will become available to offer communication services to their customers. “We will lay the fiber in homes and businesses – once again clarified Starace – and we will manage the maintenance of the network. We will not become a telephone operator, on the contrary we will make the fiber available to operators. An initial agreement was reached with Vodafone and Wind after tough but constructive discussions. The infrastructure is open to any operator who requests it and is not exclusive”. The reference to Telecom is clear, remained a stone guest in this match where now the new CEO Flavio Cattaneo will have to play his cards. The other major absentee is Metroweb, controlled by Cdp Equity, at the center of the discussions between Enel and Cassa Depositi (there is talk of a 30% stake for Enel) as well as between Cdp itself and Telecom which insisted, until the change of management , to have the whole cake. “We are negotiating with Metroweb to make a great Metroweb” Starace specified. Even Vodafone does not rule out continuing negotiations with the company controlled by CDP for those areas not covered by the agreement with Enel, Bisio specified. Confirming that the picture is still fluid, in motion.
If for now we start in the zones (A and B) where we operate in competition (large cities, provincial capitals, etc.), the real leap in quality will take place with tenders for market failure zones, many of which in the South, where operators alone would not have the strength to arrive. "On 29 April we will publish the first announcement for zones C and D - announced Renzi - on the occasion of the celebration in Pisa of the thirty years since the arrival of the Internet in Italy". On the plate, the premier recalled, there are 2,2 billion already approved by the Cipe and which are only waiting for the tenders, on which Brussels is currently evaluating, to be spent. Here the public company Infratel will intervene, which will make the tenders and assign the works to whoever will be able to offer the best prices and conditions.
“Industries 4.0, companies, offices, businesses: the bulk of the fundamental change that will come from fiber optics and ultra-fast Internet will be concentrated here – said Starace – as well as for the families who wish to request it. Enel will also repeat the operation in other countries where it has a network such as Bogotà, Rio, Lima and Santiago”.
Finally, the redundancies. With regard to the risk of job cuts in Telecom Italia as a result of the fiber network project announced by Enel, "there is a press release that has denied this hypothesis", undersecretary Claudio De Vincenti wanted to clarify, answering a question on the 15 -20 thousand Telecom redundancies hypothesized on Wednesday by the unions. Today Vivendi, with a note, affirmed that it is in Italy for development and not for cutting staff.
