(Bloomberg) -- Italy’s government envisages a union of Open Fiber SpA and FiberCop to form a single Italian network, according to a top the finance ministry official.
Italy wants to have “just one company in the country for the fiber network,” Marcello Sala, who is in charge of privatizations for the Finance Ministry, said in an interview at the Bloomberg Future of Finance forum in Milan on Thursday.
State lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti SpA controls network Open Fiber and also holds a minority stake in Telecom Italia. Fibercop is the company that manages and operates Telecom Italia’s former landline network after it was sold to US investment firm KKR & Co. Inc.
Having a single network would avoid billions of euros in duplicate investments and is in line with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s desire to boost digital services in the country. The government has for years been discussing the possibility of combining Telecom Italia’s landline network assets with the ones of smaller rival Open Fiber.
Earlier this year, Telecom Italia completed the sale of its network to KKR & Co. in a €19 billion deal to help it slash debt. The deal includes about €3 billion in earn-outs mostly linked to a possible merger with Open Fiber.
--With assistance from Antonio Vanuzzo.
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