(Finance) – The single network is a way to deal with a large investment, guaranteeing a return. This is what the managing director of TIM, Peter Labriola who, during the Quarta Repubblica broadcast this evening on Retequattro, underlined how “in the past we were able to sustain high investments for a single network such as the copper one and we were able to do so because Telecom operated under a monopoly regime” . “Now – explained the top manager – we are faced with the need for a new wave of investment and for example, I don’t hear rumors that there is a need to build two bridges over the Strait of Messina or to build two high-speed lines on the Naples-Bari line”. “They want to build only one – he added – because the investment must guarantee a return and if two infrastructures are built there is no return”.
TIM – Labriola went on to say – is “an industrially healthy company” which however must resolve “the debt problem” still linked to the old Olivetti takeover bid of 1999.
As for Brazil – where TIM started out as a “low cost operator, with the lowest prices and has now become one of the best operators” – the CEO – the telephone group is “the second operator in the world in terms of return on investment and best South American operator”. “We are doing very well. We have led the path of ‘market repair’. We have led the path to reduce the operators from 5 to 3 and we have bought the 4/o”. In Brazil – explained Labriola – the customer “pays 10 euros as in Italy, but with a completely different spending capacity”, so much so that “unemployment income in Brazil is the equivalent of 200 euros”.
The CEO of TIM then showed that he shared the proposal lower the VAT on telephony. “22% is the rate for luxury goods” – she said – underlining that “we pay 10% for electricity and 5% for gas”. Telephony has become an essential commodity “You can’t go an hour without telephony and if it’s an essential good why do you have to pay 22% VAT? This would allow, on the one hand, to continue to have a low price for end customers and, on the other, for companies to recover a some profitability”.