On Thursday 27 January, the European Commission authorised €3.8 billion of Italian support under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to deploy high-performance gigabit networks. The areas concerned are those with no network capable of providing a download speed of at least 300 megabits per second (Mbps).
The RRF will fully finance the aid after adopting the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan, which arranges important investment projects in the electronic communications sector, including the deployment of efficient fixed and mobile networks. The scheme approved today concerns the fixed networks.
Support will be granted until 30 June 2026, in the form of direct grants. The measure will finance the deployment of networks offering a download speed of 1 gigabit per second (Gpbs) and an upload speed of 200 megabits per second (Mpbs) in areas of Italy where there is no network capable of providing a download speed of at least 300 Mbps.
In particular, the Commission found that the measure was necessary to address market failures resulting from the absence of current or planned broadband networks that would adequately meet end-users’ needs. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)