Do you have a slow Internet connection, still on copper wire? Until now you were discriminated against, a victim of the so-called digital divide. From next New Year's Eve, that is in a few days, you risk being hit by a 10% surcharge on your line precisely because it is asphyxiated, incapable of withstanding the challenge of the times. A digital outcast to be punished, in short. Even to be cancelled: if you do not manage to obtain a good fiber line within a pre-established deadline you will be disconnected, period.
It's a paradox but it's all true. It's exactly what themajority amendment n. 76.07 to the 2015 budget maneuver filed in the Chamber on November 15 by the deputy of Fratelli d'Italia Fabio Carmine Raimondo, made public in recent days to the general astonishment and one consolation: the measure is so controversial that for a series of solid reasons, and not only for the strong protests of all, it will most likely end up being sunk.
The goal: to finance a new attempt to take off the problematic plan to accelerate broadband throughout Italy and not just in the richest and most densely populated areas by “forcing” the market not with incentives or regulatory constraints but by penalizing old copper technologies with taxes. The target is discriminatory: citizens and with them many operators who have no responsibility for the delays in adapting the networks, already penalized by slow connections, certainly not through their fault. The application mechanism is obscure: all connections? Even mixed ones with the copper pair that covers only the last stretch from the sidewalk (FTTC, Fiber To The Cabinet)? Only private individuals and businesses or also central and peripheral public administration? And how can we imagine even a vague compatibility with Italian and European regulations to protect consumers.
For those who fear being hit, we reserve a possible parachute, an emergency solution, in case the measure becomes widespread. The temporary replacement of our landline with a "similar to landline" voice and data connection through the mobile phone network or a satellite connection, as we have illustrated in detail in one of our tutorials It could be a great solution, both in terms of performance and cost, compared to our current copper connection.
A tax for the innocent
The articulation of the amendment speaks clearly. The official objective is to accelerate the diffusion of fiber optics throughout Italy by financing a specific fund to strengthen incentives intended to cover the costs of migration to ultra-broadband networks by forcing the decommissioning of the old copper network. An operation certainly necessary. Compared to the programs, which should have already celebrated the final phase of the operation, which was to be definitively closed by 2028, we are really behind. With official data that moreover stop at a year ago when the lines entirely in fiber optics did not reach an average of 30% of the national total with a strong discrimination between the large urban centers and the rich industrial areas and the more peripheral areas that even pay for the failure of the experimental operation for the extraordinary intervention on the so-called white areas "with market failure".
Hence the idea: a 10% increase by law on the prices of copper services starting from January 2025, 50, intended to finance an additional fund for the switch off. The amendment does not explicitly assign the burden to end consumers but to accelerate the process by reaching at least 2026% of fiber for all users by 10 with a new progression that will have to be developed in detail by the Communications Authority, it will have to be applied to all copper services, with their "price increase equal to XNUMX% of the overall value" intended to accelerate the fiber.
It is largely foreseeable that the increase will neither be absorbed nor spread across the entire user base and will inevitably hit the direct protagonists of the levy, namely the owners of copper connections. For whom an even bloodier axe is expected. Once the timeframe that will be defined by the Authority to complete the entire switch off process towards fiber has expired, users still active on copper will still have six months to try to connect to fiber, beyond which "the copper network will be decommissioned and the related service will be interrupted".
The hunt (which does not exist) for the real culprits
In the meantime, the fiber operation is tottering between the strategic and financial crisis of the most direct protagonists and at the same time operational managers of the mission. We are talking about Open Fiber, the institutional operator with a large CDP majority established specifically to be the protagonist of the operation, and Team, the former monopolist owned by CDP itself which continues to have a de facto monopoly on the old copper network to be decommissioned, itself committed to building the fibre infrastructure.
The premises (and promises) of the great switch-off operation were based on some guiding criteria. Two fundamental ones: the rationalization of the works avoiding duplication of the fiber networks with rigorous rules that provided access to them under fair and non-discriminatory conditions by all operators regardless of who had built them; a system of financial and regulatory incentives (also in terms of simplifying procedures) that allowed coverage even of the less wealthy and profitable areas of the country.
The media chronicles are full of reports that testify to the failure to comply with these guiding criteria, with inevitable repercussions on the consequent dispersion of resources and delays in the processes. In the "rich" areas, dense with users and therefore more favorable to business for the operators, there is a clear duplication or even multiplication of infrastructures, with fiber optic cables installed by different operators that overlap, intertwine and in some cases even interfere with each other. In many homes, not only in the upper districts of large cities, there are fiber connection boxes from three or even four connectivity providers competing not only on the service but also on the physical lines.
In the meantime, in the "market failure" areas, theoretically blessed by extraordinary public incentives, there are many examples of fiber already installed for months, thanks to the use of huge public resources, which however are left dormant without the final interconnections available to operators and users. Those same users who in the meantime will be called to pay the new 10% tax and who, if something does not really change, will risk being cut off from the Internet and the world, perhaps with dead fiber in the drain under their home.
