The investment plan is unsustainable even with a public contribution that can reach 90 percent. One of the two tenders for 5G networks financed by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr) must be deserted: no offers have been received for the six lots by the deadline of 9 May. This is the procedure launched by Infratel, the in-house company of the Ministry of Economic Development, to cover “market failure” areas with the 5G telephone service: maximum value of the contribution 974 million euros, to subsidize up to 90 % of private investments.
The telecommunications operators abandoned the idea of participating after having developed a series of simulations on the economic level of the operation, which proved too demanding to cover widely peripheral areas of the country, from which it would have been difficult to generate revenues and profits that can balance costs, also considering the obligation to open the wholesale infrastructure.
The burden of operating costs
In line with EU rules, the state incentive would have covered the Capex part up to 90%, but the Opex component, the set of operating costs, weighed heavily in the assessments of the operators. The call asked to arrive in residual areas, which do not fall within the coverage obligations arising in 2018 from the assignment of 5G licenses. Precisely the request for installment of the charge expiring in September 2022, approximately 4.8 billion, which weighs on Tim, Vodafone, WindTre and Iliad as an installment for the tender four years ago is another open game with the government, also if it did not affect the missed offers.
The ministry of technological innovation and digital transition, which coordinates the strategy for ultra-broadband funded with the PNRR, believes that it has placed favorable conditions on the plate, after having checked an extremely high limit for public incentives with the European Commission. (90% in fact).
The puzzle of alternatives
Now the ministry should initiate discussions with the European Commission to verify the possibility of moving unused resources to other projects or purposes, but there is also the possibility that the unused PNRR funds remain at that point in the availability of the EU.