On the single network it could really be the right time. He assured it the CEO of Open Fiber, Mario Rossetti, during today's meeting with the press in Milan.
"We are in a position to reach an agreement. The issue of October 31st (deadline set in the Memorandum of Understanding to arrive at a concrete proposal, ed) is important but that's not what makes the difference. This type of agreement is made if the will is there, there isn't a problem of timing. I'm not worried about a technical industrial deal, the problem concerns more the upstairs”, that of the shareholders who must value the assets and decide on governance, explained the CEO to journalists.
The manager then added that the Open Fiber business plan – which will be updated after the summer to include the gray areas outside the EU tenders – from an operational point of view it would not suffer any impact from the possible ok to the single network.
A month after the signing of the letter of intent between Cdp and Tim which aims to reach the creation of a single fiber network integrating Tim's fixed network assets with those of Open Fiber, of which Cdp owns 60%, Rossetti said convinced “of the goodness of the project and that it is something significant for the country and its definitive digitization. We look at the topic from an industrial point of view, which is the most important thing for us. We also worked with Tim to define the perimeters” but “the area related to evaluation is already quite crowded”.
The CEO then reiterated that the synergies on the single fiber optic network project "are significant and concern several billion euros" in particular with respect to what will not be built in duplication. “It's a relevant theme that however has one variable: it's the moment in which all this happens, the more time passes, the more it has been built and the less the synergies are worth; the sooner it happens, the more synergies are worth".
Rossetti: "We're making up for the delays, but 3-4 thousand workers are needed"
"Our focus is on the white areas”, Rossetti then underlined, explaining that “Open fiber has recorded a significant delay to the end of last year on the white areas”. The purpose of the company is therefore to accelerate and reduce "these delays as much as possible". "The company's mission, remarked the CEO, "is the white areas so much so that we have moved resources from the black areas", those where there are more margins and competition "to the white ones and we are looking for all the measures to have an increase in resources on construction sites', the manager stated again.
On the telecommunications construction sites, stopped due to lack of manpower, Rossetti explained that "there is a systemic difficulty in carrying out the works even if having a group like Cdp behind us gives us a broader breadth but the production capacity of the supply chain is limited ”.
The CEO of Open Fiber announced that "we are discussing with the various bodies at government level" on the possibility of "including tcl workers in the next Flussi decree". From this point of view, she continued, "we have a few hundred construction sites on which we have no resources to deploy". On white areas, for example, "we need at least 1.500 people to be able to hire and go to construction sites" and "3 or 4 thousand workers for the entire perimeter of the group. A figure that will double”, explains Rossetti.
“What is holding us back is not money or managerial capacity but manpower,” he continued. “We will use extraordinary methods: the company is equipping itself with its own resources, we are looking at other international operators who can enter this market and we have moved resources from the black areas to the white ones”. "We are also discussing with the Government to include telecommunications workers in the new decree and there are contacts with the DAP to use prisoners as labor on construction sites", he concludes.
Despite everything, the numbers for 2021 are encouraging. According to the data provided by the CEO during the meeting with the press, in the first 5 months of 2022, Open Fiber has closed 538 construction sites for FTTH fiber, 20% of what has been done in the last 4 years”.
Rossetti: "Beware of inflation"
Inflation is “a subject we should reflect on ourselves, admitted the CEO. The issue does not concern the contracts already in place but "those that still have to be done and which will eventually touch the gray areas'"
Inflation, Rossetti repeated several times, is a topic that today “deserves much higher attention. On some contracts we have indexation clauses, on others we don't” but for the future “we are trying to take them into account in the best possible way”.
"We are very interested in the consultation that the Authority is opening on Telecom's request for modification, because it will become a guideline to refer to", he explained, referring to Agcom's new examination on the Tim's co-investment proposal for FiberCop, after Pietro Labriola's company asked for a review of tariffs, linking them to inflation.
Finally, the CEO reassured the relationship between Open Fiber and TIm: "they are very good, both on a personal and corporate level".
