Open Fiber late? Here are the causes (unspoken)
What people say and don't say about Open Fiber, the Bul plan and the 1 Giga Italy plan. The intervention of Dario Denni, founder of Europio Consulting
It is unthinkable to analyze the Open Fiber case without taking into account the two main public intervention plans that have seen it involved in recent years: the BUL plan and the 1 Giga Italy plan . This is because the mere fact of existing as a wholesale-only operator justifies and legitimizes its vocation to take an interest in the country's infrastructure participation with the funds that are available. So – first of all – public funds .
In the case of the white area plan, between Christmas and New Year's Eve 2021, a consultation was held on the effectiveness of state aid. The results of that public consultation are not yet known. Perhaps the result was so modest as not to justify even a negative opinion. However, the delays accumulated over time, the change of technology and the delivery point tens of meters away from the final customer's apartment, are all elements that have taken away any hope of the effectiveness of state intervention in the most remote areas of the country. We could argue that if that plan were completed today, and not in a year's time, it would no longer be able to achieve the goals that were set at the time.
The point is that rivers of words have been written on the causes of the delays of the ultra-broadband plan to bring connectivity in the white areas to market failure, while little has been said to analyze the equally disastrous delay on the networks subsidized by the PNRR in the gray areas. This is because at the time of the "Government of the best" the rule was to act quickly and do everything possible to bring home the European funds from the recovery and resilience plan on time. The objective was and remains of absolute importance, but it must however have made us lose sight of some regulatory aspects (absence of the rules on State Aid UBB networks) and factual aspects (lack of production capacity) from which to derive an analysis of market conditions which were already very predictable then and with the repercussions we see today.
First of all, the white area plane and the gray area plane are not superimposable. The first was in fact aimed at the establishment of a state-owned network. The second, on the other hand, was conceived in a "gap founding" mode, i.e. an economic model of intervention where it is assumed that the operator first makes investments with private funds according to the plans "announced" to the Government, and then, by participating in a tender, integrates the missing areas with a subsidy for a network that will remain the property of the operator, therefore no longer the property of the State.
Although in both cases these are subsidized networks, open to access by other operators under conditions regulated by Agcom, the gray areas plan assumes its symptomatic significance, precisely because due to the type of public funds used, due to design and structural differences with respect to the white areas plan, it deserves a separate treatment, in its own right.
In fact, analyzing the case of the gray areas, the greatest damage could be ascribed to an improbable mapping exercise and to the determination of tenders in the absence of certain European rules on state aid for ultrabroadband networks, which arrived a year late with respect to the assignment of tenders. In fact, at the time, the reference to the CD was considered valid. “Guiding template”, a non-binding working document which represented a draft of European rules. So it happened that as the objectives imposed by the Government varied, including the intervention thresholds between passed and served civics, all the other conditions and timings that normally create a balance in all infrastructure plans of this type varied, causing the conditions to implement it to waver. Thus, by landing the Italy project on a gigabyte of even more challenging objectives than the European Digital Compass, a slice of infrastructure was cut out, which numerous regional operators of great importance have acquired over the years and are active precisely in the areas of interest. Their networks have become invisible to Infratel's mapping precisely because of the too high auction that was set by the department led by former minister Colao who wanted to reach a super-performing network four years in advance and distributed to all real estate units whose number and location – still today – it seems that the number and location are not recorded with certainty.
As inevitably happens in cases of non-compliance with objectives of national interest, politics wonders about responsibilities. But pointing fingers without correctly announcing the technical, regulatory and judicial causes that produced the delay remains an exercise in style. And this is precisely the reason why, in Italy, mistakes are repeated.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/open-fiber-in-ritardo-ecco-le-cause-taciute/ on Tue, 25 Jul 2023 13:14:48 +0000.