Ultra-wideband, the Connectivity Fund is created to save NRP resources

The 1 Giga Italy plan financed by the NRP was supposed to be a turning point for ultra-wideband connectivity in the country, both for households and businesses, e.g. in industrial districts.

But with less than a year to go before the deadlines imposed by the European Commission, the government has been forced to run for cover by scaling back its objectives. Weighed down by the delays accumulated by one of the two winning bidders, Open Fiber, which informed the Department for Digital Transformation at Palazzo Chigi that it could not guarantee coverage of as many as 700,000 house numbers out of the approximately 2.2 million awarded. In recent days, the government's Cabina di Regia on the NRP approved the proposed revision. Italy is officially asking the European Commission to postpone the coverage of 700 thousand house numbers by more than four years. The target, in fact, is no longer June 2026 but 2030, in time to align with the deadlines of the European strategic programme 'Digital Decade'.

In order to realise what is in fact an extension, even if it is not called that, a new financial instrument will be created, called the National Connectivity Fund, into which the residual resources corresponding to the cut in house numbers will flow. Other economies of the NRP managed by the Department for Digital Transformation will also be added to it, for a total of about EUR 700 million. The government's idea at this point is to cover about 580,000 house numbers with a new tender, confirming the requirement of connections at least 1 gigabit per second. The remaining quota, however, in the most remote areas, and again with a public tender, could be covered with a mixed system that also employs satellite technology, a prospect that, for example, opens up entirely new scenarios such as the use of equipment from Elon Musk's Starlink.

One wonders, however, whether the original ambitions and promises are not being somewhat betrayed. According to the majority of experts, to date, using satellites for the part of the connection called backhauling and then completing everything with terrestrial technologies results in performance that is unlikely to reach the 1 gigabit threshold. And when all is said and done, Italy will end up with less advanced coverage than that which was included in the NRP agreed with the Commission in 2021.