Prime Minister Renzi has recently reaffirmed the importance of overcoming the digital divide and the need to rapidly implement the digital agenda through a true "revolution", as he himself defined it. He has assumed the political responsibility for the implementation of the Digital Agenda and, according to what Corriere delle Comunicazioni anticipates today, it would be official that the powers for his coordination of the digital agenda and the supervision of the Agency's activities for Digital Italy will go to the Minister for Simplification and Public Administration Marianna Madia.
In light of this, and to reiterate the urgency for Italy to adopt the necessary measures, it may be interesting to re-read the latest data published by the OECD (February 2014) which highlight how Italy is only in the twentieth placed, in the list of the 34 countries that are part of it, for mobile broadband penetration (below the 60% threshold), and twenty-fourth for fixed line broadband.
We must at all costs go up this ranking and gain positions, Italy and above all its companies must return to being competitive and it will not be possible if the telecommunications infrastructures and the consequent accessibility for all are not improved.
The answer to the problem is not unequivocal, the vision must be global and the solution will be given by a set of pieces, put together as in a puzzle made up of different answers: each territorial reality and each market corresponds to a different technological solution which identified and appropriately implemented.
The Caio report published last January had already drawn the elements of this puzzle by dedicating an important chapter to the so-called FWB (Fixed Wireless Broadband) which today allows operators to offer speeds of up to 25 Mbps, but which in 2015 will allow up to 50 Mbps In his report, Francesco Caio clearly highlighted that, not only in Italy but also at a European level, "FWB technology does not always receive the attention it deserves", a technology instead to be considered as a determining factor for the achievement of European objectives for the development of digital infrastructures.
The Report states that, "according to Agcom data relating to the last few months of 2013, there are already 270.000 users of FWA technology in Italy, a number not much lower than the number of fiber users in the same reference period (290.000)" and it would be short-sighted, I might add, pay no attention to this fact.
This is supported by the fact that in our country, at the moment, there are resources available but, in fact, totally unused. This is the portion of the 200 megahertz spectrum between the 3,6 and 3,8 giga frequencies which, if used optimally, would undoubtedly help to give competitiveness and development to FWB technologies, the so-called fixed wireless, thus contributing to the solution of the digital divide. Among other things, this is a largely free portion of the spectrum, currently used only for some radio links of RaiWay, Telecom Italia and the Ministry of Defence.
Not only that, there is also a 2008 European Union decision that assigns these frequencies precisely to the FWA, a decision that has not yet been implemented after AgCom had launched a consultation in 2012 interrupted by the arrest suffered by the liberalization process and finally, remember, even the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently turned its attention to the development and best exploitation of Fixed Wireless Broadband.
It is therefore important that the issue returns to priority and AgCom is now called upon to quickly provide the guidelines for the use of frequencies, so that it can then proceed with the assignment to the operators within the year. How they will be assigned is another point on which Agcom will have to make a decision, among the possible choices there is talk of a "zero cost" tender, that is, a tender that establishes the assignees on the basis of stringent commitments on timing, on investments ( in capital and labour) and on coverage.
We will see what the Authority will decide, in the meantime it is a fact that there is an ever-increasing need to respond to the ever-increasing number of users who must be able to have bandwidth available to work, but also to be able to take full advantage of all the opportunities provided from the Net, not least the increasingly numerous video services that have also arrived in Italy after the launch of, for example, Infinity, Sky Online, Chili TV and others. Operators have all been recording a dramatic increase in bandwidth consumption for video services of this type in recent months and this question needs to be answered.
If you want to achieve concrete results, in this case also saving considerably on costs, solutions of the magnitude of FWA technology cannot be ignored. We are therefore confidently waiting that, after the guidelines of the Caio Report shared by the Government in office, Agcom will also demonstrate its commitment to overcoming the digital divide in Italy with great efficiency.
