Open Fiber, 3.4 million civics assigned. But the works risk slipping beyond 2026

Delays in wiring grey areas: Open Fiber and Fibercop win the tender, but time is running out

There are 3.4 million house numbers put up for tender in the grey areas, those with semi-market failure for the managers of fiber access networkwhich were awarded to Open Fiber (8 lots for a total of 2.2 million civic numbers) and to Fibercop, passed from Tim to the group led by Kkr (7 lots with approximately 1.6 million civic numbers). Unfortunately, the plan financed with the PNRR funds (1.8 billion) and therefore with a fixed deadline of 2026 is late.

Indeed it was not enough that the government approved the relocation of the house numbers by decree assigned to the cabling in a more homogeneous manner as requested by the two network operators to save kilometers of excavation and installation. The new deadline to start the work is scheduled for early October, that is, when the public consultation between the operators of the sector will be concluded that Infratel, in order to avoid appeals, wanted for the rebalancing of the coverage plans of the gray areas.

The government, which is a 60% shareholder of Open Fiber with CDP (the remaining 40% is held by the Australian fund Macquarie), is obviously pushing for the completion of the process. Moreover, both Open Fiber and Fibercop have already received an advance of approximately 300 million each on the PNRR funds. Furthermore, for Open Fiber, the approval of the practice would guarantee the green light to the approximately 3 billion in additional financing compared to the original plan requested from banks and shareholders. Open Fiber and Fibercop have presented their new plans for wiring the gray areas, which include the replacement of some street numbers in municipalities scattered across the territory and therefore more difficult to reach and more expensive. In their place would come those called “adjacent”, that is, close to those already mapped that were not present at the time of the assignment of the lots. Needless to say, the replacement reduces the kilometers of wiring and therefore also the costs.

The problem is that Open Fiber uses public money to build the network given the presence of Cdp as the majority shareholderand, therefore, if there were a private company (even Fibercop itself) interested in bringing the fiber to one of the chosen numbers, the company led by Giuseppe Gola would have to give up and recalibrate its plan. Therefore, the risk of having to postpone the start of the works is concrete and, given that they must necessarily end in 2026 or risk losing the Pnrr funds, the problem is not insignificant. Open Fiber declares itself optimistic about the outcome of the consultation but it is now clear that only the creation of a single access network (with Fibercop) would guarantee sustainable and long-lasting strategies and synergies to the two network players and to the country system.