The association exposes the hypocrisy and denounces the waste of public money

The 138 municipalities wired with direct intervention by Infratel they have dark fiber due to the absence of interested operators, according to a survey by the steering and monitoring committee of the in-house company of the Ministry of Economic Development.

News that, according to Assoprovider, indicates mismanagement of public funds: «The question that should be asked to the same Steering and Monitoring Committee is who and how decided to implement those infrastructures.», emphasizes Dino Bortolotto, president of Assoprovider.

Remove the veil of hypocrisy from Infratel

For the association of independent ISPs, it is "time to lift the veil of hypocrisy" post about the role of Infratel: «It is necessary to tell the truth and say that Infratel, from the moment of its establishment, has never had a clear project direction, ending up playing a mere role of a "cash cow" for Telecom Italia. Infratel has been used to fund with public capital the necessary infrastructure for Telecom to connect its exchanges to its area POPs».

A statement by the president that everyone can verify, downloading the maps from the Geo4Wip portal of Infratel and uploading them to any GIS system or Google Earth: «You will see that where a network built by Infratel begins and ends, there is always a Telecom pop. It is the "spaghettini policy" (as operators call it). That is point-to-point micro networks that solely aim to save Telecom the investments necessary to complete its peripheral infrastructures and extend its broadband service (xDSL)»..

Strategies that, for the association, are light years away from a serious infrastructure policy beneficial to all telecom operators in the country.

Small operators invest their own money to reduce the digital divide

According to Assoprovider, Infratel would thus fail in its mission to reduce the digital divide. A mission, on the contrary, carried forward by small authorized operators, as the ISP members of the association: «In many market failure areas, operators with FWA radio links and local networks, built with private funds, work to reduce the connectivity gap in those territories. These are the same operators who bear high costs for the backhaul network needed to connect their customers to the national nodes of the Big Internet.».

Stop shifting political responsibilities onto operators

Assoprovider cannot remain indifferent to this maneuver aimed at shifting the responsibility for the lack of use of fiber and infrastructures onto the operators: «It is a distasteful attempt to pass the buck. This is how political responsibilities are hidden which in recent weeks is considering repurchasing the assets of the TIM network, once again forgetting those SMEs that still today contribute to bringing broadband and ultra-broadband to the country without any public financial support».

Assoprovider invites the Steering and Monitoring Committee to check the position of Infratel Networks and answer questions about the actual functions it performs: «As operators we do not intend to be a scapegoat, to sweep more dust under the rug», concludes Bortolotto.