We deal with Metroweb, but Vodafone remains out. This is the news of the long interview with Repubblica's Affari&Finanza with which Marco Patuano, CEO of Telecom Italia reopens the game, which instead seemed archived, on ultra-broadband. After the decisions of the Telecom Board of Directors to close the channel and proceed on its own, today Patuano - in the meantime Vodafone has signed a letter of intent with F2i to create the new fiber infrastructure for super-fast Internet through Metroweb Sviluppo - let it be known that that channel has never closed completely. But Vodafone's move evidently had its effect.
“Il conversation table with the two partners Fsi and F2i it is open – states the CEO – we have clarified our intention to create an ambitious industrial plan which will in any case have to obtain the prior consent of all the Authorities”. And about the knot of 51% control right away? “There is no doubt that the operator participating in Metroweb must have operational control of the project in his hands. The ways in which this objective can be achieved are different and are currently the subject of discussion." On this point it should be remembered that Franco Bassanini, president of Cdp and a strong partner of Metrowe through its shareholdings in Fsi and F2i, proposed a two-stage operation, in which the operators would all be equal partners in the network construction phase and then instead have Telecom rise to 51% with the shutdown of the copper network.
On one point Patuano doesn't give in: “I understand Vodafone's move – he states – but I feel like it exclude the hypothesis of cohabitation". The proposal already presented by the English group is very clear on this point: ready to invest in the company that builds the new fiber network but only on the condition that all shareholders are equal. The tug of war, therefore, continues.
