Alberto Calcagno, CEO if the Swisscom-owned Fastweb, said in a newspapre interview that rolling electricity company Enel’s broadband network, OpEn Fiber, into that of the former Telecom Italia “would make sense”.
But he opposed ideas to split TIM into a network company and a service company.
“Talking about splitting up the incumbent network is the way to block projects and development for at least a couple of years,” Calcagno told the newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore in the interview.
“It would make sense” for the networks of TIM and OpEn Fiber to merge, he said, so that “OpEn Fiber was contributing to TIM with CDP [Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, part-owner of OpEn Fiber] as a shareholder to guarantee investment, quality, and network rollout.”
But Fastweb does not want to add its network to the mix, he insisted. Fastweb “we will continue to invest” in major urban areas “as we have done so far”, he added.
“If we talk about a larger project, we cannot but consider that we are starting to think about the 5G that is halfway between mobile and fixed, given the need for fibre. I think that operational synergies would be needed.”
In rural areas “we will be customers” of TIM and OpEn Fiber, he said. But “we will continue to compete with our network and our services in the major cities”
