(Finance) – “We have important years of work ahead of us but the key point is to define the strategy on which to focus to create a real one digitization of the country. The network into optic fiber allows you to save 80% of energy and has very high performance: do we want to stay on old technologies that sooner or later will have to be abandoned or do we want to plan a migration now, which takes a long time, to future-proof technologies?”. So Mario LipsticksCEO of Open Fiber, in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore.
“Open Fiber is doing a very serious and important job”, underlined Rossetti, denying the criticisms regarding a company in breakdown, given “the acceleration in the development of the network in areas white“. Open Fiber with almost 14 million real estate units covered in FTTH and 115,000 kilometers built, has the most extensive fiber optic access network in Italy and among the main in Europe. Around 65% of clients Ftth in Italy navigate on our infrastructure. So let’s talk about a essential strategic asset for any reasoning on the digitization of the country,” he said.
Nor, explained the CEO, “there has been no slowdown related to the Tim network dossier (Cdp and Macquarie had presented an offer to which that of Kkr was then preferred, ed) thanks also to the extraordinary commitment of the people who work in Open Fiber. They prove it numbers. In the first half of the year we invested 848 million against 582 million a year ago, in 2022 investments were over 1.5 billion and this year they will rise by around 2 billion. All this with growing numbers on the income statement that we put on paper in the half-year: revenues of 267.5 million: +28%. And Ebitda also stood at 102.7 million: +33%”.
“On areas white, we have inherited important delays from the previous management – underlined the number one of Open Fiber -. The plan was to be closed in 2020, but as of December 31, 2021 progress was 42 percent. Today we are building 20 thousand kilometers a year of infrastructure, 50 kilometers a day on the white areas. If the company had always worked with this speed the project Ultra broadband, from 90 thousand kilometers, it would have already ended. In the last 19 months we have covered more than 30,000 kilometres. In the 48 months between 2017 and 2021, 37,500 were built. Today we are at 76% progress. Which means that we confirm the completion of the works at 2024″.
Rossetti then highlighted another result achieved by the company, i.e. the authorization to finalize over 350 million funds Europeans on ERDF-funded municipalities in white areas by the end of the year: “otherwise they would have been lost. Once the network is up and running there is an administrative process for the testing which takes time, this explains the higher number of real estate units in salability compared to the tested ones”.
Finally, a final consideration was dedicated to clients. “There are positive signs: since we reduced i prices, from 16.7 to 12.5 euros per line, we have seen growing interest from operators thanks also to the reduction in activation times and the improvement of the service – underlined Rossetti -. In this context, the agreement with Tim a year ago for the use of emails is also positive infrastructure fibercop. In fact, we are considering extending it to gray areas as well as white ones. We both have an interest in reusing existing infrastructure.”