Content deals boost Telecom Italia ultra-fast broadband

Marco Patuano

Telecom Italia saw strong growth in the ultra-fast broadband segment in the second quarter, boosted, according to CEO Marco Patuano by its raft of recent agreements with content providers.

Telecom Italia had 374,000 next-generation network subscribers at the end of June, up from 290,000 in March and up from 231,000 in December. Overall retail broadband subscribers stood at 6.971 million, up only slightly from 9.945 million at the end of March.

Overall broadband revenues for the quarter stood at €430 million, up 6.8%.

The operator plans to invest over €10 billion this year and has set out a strategy focusing on five key areas – high-speed fixed and mobile broadband, the development of data centres to support cloud services, international fibre connections and the transformation of its industrial processes.

Telecom Italia aims to provide fibre access to 75% of the country’s population by 2017 and 4G access to 95% in the same period. It said that the aim of its accelerated investment programme was to create the foundations for stabilisation and recovery of turnover based increasingly on the spread of innovative services with digital content.

“The fixed ultra–broadband [result] clearly shows the benefits of the agreements we are stipulating with contents providers, increasing the demand for connection,” said Patuano.

Telecom Italia has recently announced content deals with Sky, Netflix and, most recently, Mediaset Premium, distributing content online to a dedicated set-top box.

Overall, Telecom Italia turned in revenues of €10.097 billion for the first half, down 4.3%, and EBITDA of €3.633 billion, down 16.4%.