The CEO of Italian wholesale operator Open Fiber says the firm plans to complete the bulk of its network rollout by the end of 2022, with only its deployments in Piedmont, Lombardy and Veneto extending into 2023. Elisabetta Ripa told La Stampa that the telco has so far passed 8.5 million homes with its fibre infrastructure and it is now the third largest fibre network operator in Europe behind Telefonica of Spain and France’s Orange Group. Open Fiber eventually plans to cover around 19 million premises across hundreds of cities and towns.
The CEO also confirmed that Open Fiber intends to proceed with legal action against Telecom Italia (TIM) following an antitrust ruling last month which found that the incumbent had abused its dominant position in Italy’s broadband market, hampering rivals’ attempts to gain market share in the sector. TIM was fined EUR116 million (USD131 million) by regulators following a three-year investigation into its plans to roll out its own fibre networks in rural areas, after losing out in a state-subsidised tender to deploy open access infrastructure which was won by Open Fiber.