FibreCop-Open Fibre, the Treasury wants the single network

It must be said that the Treasury, understood as an institution, does not lack consistency. For Sparkle, the submarine cable company that belongs to Telecom Italia and has always been considered strategic (also because it passes through hot spots on the planet), the figure offered this week - 700 million - is still the same as seven or eight years ago when the proposal - then via Cdp, but in agreement with the shareholder - was received by Tim's top management Giuseppe Recchi and Flavio Cattaneo. At the time, according to informed sources, at one point an 'exchange in kind' was offered, in essence a barter: 100 per cent of Open Fiber against 100 per cent of Sparkle in the context of a €700 million transaction. Open Fiber was taking its first steps and in fact its business perimeter coincided with that of Metroweb, the fibre-optic network company in Milan, which Telecom was interested in. Nothing came of it because Telecom was only willing to give up 50 per cent of Sparkle in exchange, thus valuing it at exactly twice the price.

In hindsight, the story would have been very different if Tim had accepted that offer: he probably would not have found himself in the position of having to give up the network, which he sold in July to the group led by the US fund Kkr. Nor would Open Fibre have found itself having to depend on banks to finance a parallel infrastructure that still does not maintain itself independently. However, the project to bring together the network of the incumbent - which is now no longer Tim's - and that of Open Fibre - which in the meantime is no longer just Milan - has not waned. On the contrary, the difficulties of the context are probably pushing to accelerate the attempt to promote an infrastructural integration, which is in any case fraught with obstacles. Speaking yesterday at the Future of finance forum, organised in Lombardy's capital by Bloomberg, Marcello Sala, director general for economics and finance at the Mef - who oversees participations and privatisations - expressly said that Italy wants to have 'only one company for fibre optics in the country'.

On both fronts, it is the Treasury that is exposed on the networks. In FiberCop, as the Netco that has taken over the Telecom network is now called, the Mef holds 16% and although control is held by a sophisticated financial entity such as Kkr, the ministry expresses the president (former Tim CEO and former Poste CEO Massimo Sarmi) who has veto power over certain issues, considered more sensitive. In Open Fiber, it is Cdp, whose majority is held by the Treasury, which controls 60 per cent of the company engaged in the bumpy path of cabling areas with total or partial market failure, and in a parallel perennial negotiation with banks to obtain the funds to go ahead with the construction of the fibre network alternative to Telecom's (which in the black, competitive areas already exists). But the interlocutors at the table are more than one and managing to bring all interests together will not be a walk in the park.