Terna is in the spotlight on the Stock Exchange. The group, owner of the high-voltage electricity transmission network and controlled by the Treasury through CDP, could enter the ultra-broadband game. The Corriere della Sera writes it this morning. The agreement signed with the division also pushes the stock among the major increases on the list General Electric Digital Energy, to improve the supply of electricity to companies and private homes in the country, integrating production from renewable sources in a more effective and stable way. However Terna denies the rumors: ""There is no involvement in the broadband project and no meeting on the subject has been held" with Palazzo Chigi, company sources specified.
This does not mean that on thebroadband operation the spotlight has been on since this morning. In addition to Enel, which said it was willing to make the distribution network available for the laying of fiber cables in order to speed up the construction of the new 100 Mega network as much as possible (three years is the goal), Terna also he would have made a similar proposal to the government. CEO Matteo Del Fante, in a meeting at Palazzo Chigi with the deputy secretary general Raffaele Tiscar, would have given its willingness to lay fiber cables along the 63.500 km of Terna's network (or a large part of them, where needed) to help get a project off the ground, the one on broadband, on which the government intends to step back. "We consider it strategic to make up for the delay and put ultra-broadband at the service of the country's development with all the potential of digital" reaffirmed the Undersecretary for Communications Antonello Giacomelli. “No one in the government – he continued, replying to the accusations of interference in Telecom Italia's plans – wants to replace private individuals, write industrial plans or extend slides on the desks of others. But we are fully aware that there is a general interest, a common good, which concerns the country and which it is up to the government to affirm".
The Terna plan, at the moment, it would only be colloquial, therefore a step backwards compared to Enel which has taken more formal steps: both by indicating its project to Agcom (the Communications Control and Guarantee Authority) and by presenting it directly to Prime Minister Renzi. Nor would the two projects overlap given that Terna controls the transmission grid, i.e. the national high voltage backbone (where, moreover, there are already substantial fiber networks), while Enel can count on the largest national low-voltage distribution network and around 450.000 electrical substations. The purpose of Enel, as of Terna, is not to transform itself into a telecommunications operator but instead to obtain as quickly as possible a widespread and branched ultra-broadband infrastructure even in the less commercial areas of the country. In other words, an infrastructure capable of supporting the advance of digital electricity services starting from the 32 million new electronic meters that Enel plans to install in homes and offices between 2016 and 2019. The meters themselves could be the head bridge to bring fiber into Italian homes, according to the FTTH (Fiber to the home) model preferred by the government but less appreciated by Telecom Italy.
The national telecommunications operator, owner of the last mile copper network, in fact wants to safeguard its assets for as long as possible and for this reason it is building its fiber network in 250 Italian cities according to the Fttc (Fiber to the cabinet, fiber up to the cab). At stake are the 6,5 billion indicated by the government's broadband plan to encourage the creation of the network in the black areas of the country, those where private investments would not have sufficient commercial returns to support the business plan. However, the game is not over even if the pieces of the government project are increasingly completing the strategic design of the operation.
Terna in the meantime, it closed the agreement with General Electric on its core business, namely the dispatching of energy on the grid. “With 63.500 km of high voltage power lines, Terna was looking for a solution that could easily collect grid data in real time, in order to identify potential faults or disturbances and implement corrective measures to prevent current”, explains the press release released by Ge. Terna will integrate Ge's "synchrophasor" into its extended monitoring system (the largest in Europe) to obtain a more complete and precise view of the functioning of its electricity grid and other local or remote devices. “Thanks to the continuous collection of grid data in real time, Terna will be able to test advanced monitoring applications and feed its own dynamic rating system”.
