“What is the role of a modern state if not that of qualifying interventions and the use of funds, including European ones? Which, if not to guarantee citizens the possibility of seeking well-being? To do this, it is necessary to start from the areas that need the most and where the public operator invests with clear criteria”. This was stated by Domenico Arcuri, managing director of Invitalia, the country's development agency, speaking of the Infratel tenders, during the meeting "Italy with full fibre", promoted in Rome by Open fiber and Askanews.
“The ultra-broadband strategy is too important an issue for it to become the subject of political contention – continued Arcuri – It is necessary to make Italy in the forefront, stronger and more competitive. We have done our duty and started making investments by entrusting them, trivially, to whoever won the tender. Now we just have to verify that the projects are realized”.
Open Fiber, the company owned 50-50 by Enel and CDP, is bringing FTTH optical fiber (into homes) to Italy. It recently expanded its partnership with Vodafone to 271 cities and approved the industrial plan to implement the development plans. with project financing of 3,5 billion. Infratel has prepared the third tender for the cabling of market failure areas and should publish it on Friday 20 April in the Official Gazette.
The go-ahead for the third tender for the construction of the public network for ultra-broadband in Puglia, Calabria and Sardinia, with a public allocation of 103 million euros, has arrived. More than 378 citizens are affected by the planned interventions and more than 296 real estate units in the 882 municipalities involved. The tender, explains Invitalia, like the previous ones of 3 June and 8 August 2016 (whose construction sites are already open), provides for two phases, the prequalification phase, in which the interested economic operators must provide information with reference to the participation and on the infrastructures they intend to reuse; the offer phase, reserved for pre-qualified bidders.
The object of the tender is the design, construction, maintenance and management in wholesale mode of a passive and active access network, which allows the provision of services to end users at 100Mbps in download and 50Mbps in upload for at least 70% of the real estate units in the Cluster C and at least 30Mbps in download and 15 Mbps in upload for the remaining real estate units of Cluster C and for those of Cluster D. The network will be licensed for 20 years and will remain public property. With this tender, explains Invitalia, the launch of the "White Areas Plan" is completed, which has already seen the awarding of the first two tenders.
(Updated at 16,34pm Thursday, April 19, 2018)
