Italian government acts on broadband strategies.
In common with many other EU governments, the Italian government has made access to broadband services a priority, and has invested substantially in infrastructure – initially for public administrations, latterly to connect the unconnected to broadband.
In some measure, the focus on broadband was stimulated by the global economic crisis which still reverberates since its first tremors were felt in mid-2008. Within months, stimulus packages were thought up across the EU and a number of projects sympathetic to taxpayers were financed and implemented. That broadband infrastructure should have been one of the key recipients of this publicly-funded largesse was not only appropriate, but it also keyed in with new – not just revised – perceptions about the national benefits which a good (i.e fast) broadband network could provide.
So the Italian government set up a number of initiatives including tax incentives for business investment, the encouragement of a range of technologies for broadband (copper, fibre, satellite, WLL, broadband powerline), harmonising investment plans with sharing available civil works resources, and aggregating demand for broadband access through public offices (schools, hospitals, post offices, universities, court offices, etc). These measures were expected to induce higher traffic volumes and thus make the extension of broadband services economically viable within towns and in depressed and/or peripheral areas.
The government also pushed for the use of EU structural funds and for the relaxation of spending limits under the EU Stability Pact to enable investment in communications infrastructure. Government programs also focused on reducing computer illiteracy by sponsoring home ownership of computers and residential broadband access under the ‘Vola con Internet’ and ‘PC alle famiglie’ programs, as also on reducing the digital divide between northern and southern provinces. Some of the projects supported include eHealth, digitising agricultural marketing projects, and broadband access in schools in Sicily and the Mezzogiorno. In addition to this investment, the government launched an initiative to extend WiFi and WiMAX technologies, principally to small townships in the depressed areas of southern Italy. In late 2008 the government began investing about €1 billion in improving broadband services as part of a public-private partnership, which it was believed would increase GDP by 1.5% to 2% annually.
One government scheme, derived from the ‘Programme for infrastructural broadband coverage (2007-2009)’ and funded with €197 million, supported public initiatives to strengthen the rollout of a national broadband network, providing a minimum of 4Mb/s to 94% of the population and 2Mb/s to the remainder. A further €800 million was earmarked to 2013 for the rollout of Next Generation Networks (NGNs).
Thus Italy is truly one of the EU countries with an effective broadband strategy in place. Indeed there are a number of government agencies and development projects guiding the national strategy, including the Interministerial Committee on Broadband development, Infratel (a company owned by the Department of Economics through the National Agency for Economic Development to address the infrastructural digital divide in remote and rural areas), Innovazione Italia (also owned by the Department of Economics, to address the socio-economic digital divide), Osservatorio Banda Larga (which measures the social and infrastructural digital divide, and advises on its findings), and the Italian Regulatory Consultation on Next Generation Broadband.
Concerning the national broadband plan, in February 2010 the government, through the Ministry of Economic Development, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Unione delle Province d’Italia (UPI), an association representing all but three Italian provinces. The agreement aims to tackle the very real digital divide in rural areas (and between the northern and southern provinces) by building broadband networks. Specifically, the agreement aims to deliver broadband to 3.2 million Italians (13% of the population in these provinces) which yet have no access to broadband. There is also provision to establish a pilot project to build NGNs in areas where no operator sees commercial advantage in investing in broadband during the next three years.
Government direction now is timely, given that the country’s two principal broadband operators, FASTWEB and Telecom Italia, are at least temporarily preoccupied – and face the threat of being put under court administration -with money laundering and tax avoidance charges.
For more information on Italy’s broadband market, see:
- Italy – Broadband Market – Overview, Statistics & Forecasts;
- Italy – Convergence – Triple Play & Digital TV;
- Italy – Key Statistics, Telecom Market & Regulatory Overviews.
