Italy adds 100,000 fibre subs per month
April 28, 2015
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
The number of fibre optic customers in Italy reached 777,000 at the end of December 2014, at the cost of ADSL which lost 200,000 customers in the same period.
According to figures published by Italy’s Communications Authority (AgCom), the number of fibre optic connections has been rising at a rate of 100,000 per month. The fibre optic (Next Generation Network) accesses represented 3.8 per cent of overall fixed accesses and 5.4 per cent of total broadband lines.
However, Italy still lags behind other Western European countries, where NGN accesses account for 10 per cent of total accesses in France, 20 per cent in Germany, 28 per cent in Spain and 32 per cent in the UK.
The regulator estimates that pay-TV revenues in 2014 amount to €3.3 billion (+4 per cent y/y); for free-to-air TV €4.6 billion (-15 per cent y/y) and €1.6 billion for the Internet sector.