Two-speed entrepreneurship in the sign of fiber optics. A few tens of kilometers divide Tai from Longarone and vice versa passing through the hamlet of Ansogne, which hosts the industrial area of Perarolo. Yet inside the Galvalux companies in Tai, the Color Point subsidiary in Longarone and Sopracolle Srl in Ansogne, the atmosphere is different. Two faces of high mountain productivity where the difference between a myriad of problems of various kinds today is the availability or otherwise of optical fiber.
Galvalux
Of the two faces, the smiling one belongs to Angelo De Polo, who three years ago introduced the optical fiber inside the Galvalux of Nebbiù. With results that he himself considered surprising.
«Today our factories, that of Galvalux in Nebbiù and that of the sister company Color Point in Longarone, work as if they were located next to each other. Merit of the optical fiber that has eliminated the distances. The departments work as if they were located outside each other’s doors. We have introduced a pool of internal programmers and this too, for example, has only been possible thanks to the presence of the optical fiber which guarantees connections of a certain type. In the last period we have managed to further improve the fiber service by increasing its potential compared to three years ago when it was introduced».
There are other operations made possible only by the introduction of optical fiber. «Teleassistance, for example», continues De Polo, «we have delicate machinery that is controlled remotely. Thanks to the speed of the system, we are able to provide advice very quickly and resolve any problems or difficulties just as quickly. But the optical fiber was also crucial in customer relations. The big names are located in large centers located hundreds of kilometers from Tai. Milan and Florence but also Paris. Thanks to the introduction of optical fibre, we have adopted a video conferencing system which allows us to interact with the customer by eliminating distances. We connect several times a week in a short time, even if only to discuss technical issues. All this without having to take the car or a plane but sitting comfortably behind a desk, with the panorama of our Dolomites outside the window. The improvements have been so remarkable that the benefits of fiber are now tangible even in the balance sheet».
The other side: Perarolo
«The situation linked to optical fiber here is simply disastrous», says Renato Sopracolle, owner of the company of the same name located in the industrial area of Ansogne and president of the Dolomiti Occhiali District consortium, «there is always a lot of talk about digitization and innovation but in our company the optical fiber has not yet arrived. We could carry it ourselves, this is true, but at exorbitant costs given that the transfer of the line from Pieve to Perarolo would be at our expense. If it had been available, we would have introduced fiber the same day. By now the movement of data within a company cannot be supported by a simple wi-fi connection, however excellently functional like the one we luckily have. Because lightning or a heavy snowfall is enough to change the scenario. Without fiber we have to give up a long series of services, which are objectively impossible to develop today”.
The damage beyond the insult for Renato Sopracolle, who in days will see the fiber pass under his home in Pieve but not in the company, where instead it would serve as bread. «I feel able to say that it is all the result of a short-sighted choice», underlines the person concerned, «watching television with a first-rate quality service interests me little. What interests me instead is that the company travels at the levels that the international market requires. The short-sighted choice lies in the fact of having brought the fiber into private homes rather than into industrialized areas where there are companies like ours that have been waiting for a long time now».