Exciting hours await Italian telecommunications. Tomorrow, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who has always made the development of ultra-broadband a must for his government, will hold a press conference at Palazzo Chigi to mark the turning point that is foreshadowed in telecommunications with Enel's investment plan for laying the fiber in the new generation network in view of the digitization of electricity meters. But it is not the only appointment and the only novelty that keeps the market in suspense.
The expectation is mainly directed to the developments of Metroweb, the Milanese company owned by F21 and Cdp, which intends to implement an investment plan in the ultra-wide network in the main cities and which is disputed by Telecom Italia (for which, however, there are problems of antitrust) and by Enel which in the last few hours seems to have accelerated the negotiations and could announce a partnership with Metroweb for the new network, commercially open to the collaboration of Vodafone and Wind.
But woe to thinking that Telecom remains on the bench. The arrival of a dynamic manager like Flavio Cattaneo at the helm of the largest Italian telephone group suggests that Telecom will soon launch a counter-offensive, also in the light of the new scenarios that Vivendi, its main shareholder, is trying to build at a European level in a non- of the consolidation in telecommunications but of a group that knows how to exploit the synergies between the network and content, of which the imminent agreement with Mediaset is an important step.
Il Sole 24 Ore has rightly drawn attention to a new report by Mediobanca securities in which, unlike in the past, we return to thinking about the economic and industrial convenience of the spin-off of the Telecom fixed network, a hypothesis already put forward in recent years by 'then president of Telecom Italia, Franco Bernabè, to reduce the group's debts but which the shareholders erroneously did not implement. Mediobanca's research service is obviously independent and does not necessarily reflect the orientations of the Piazzetta Cuccia bank, but it certainly does not emerge by chance and traces reasonable scenarios both in consideration of the protagonism of Enel and Metroweb, and of the aging and progressive loss of the old network of Telecom and the repositioning suggested by the astute Bollorè who is also a shareholder of Mediobanca and who wants to maintain good relations with the Renzi Government.
It will take time, but the unbundling of Telecom's fixed network is less and less taboo and the idea of setting up a network company owned by Telecom, Enel, Cdp and other operators and the market is not as distant as it was in past. Today, everything is moving quickly and the Italian telecommunications companies could soon find a new structure less focused on the incumbent and more open to the market, after securing the network.
