By Mike Robuck

Telecom Italia signed a commercial agreement to share its network infrastructure with state-backed Open Fiber to accelerate rollout of fibre into remote areas of Italy.

The €200 million(US$208.7million) reciprocal deal involves Open Fiber accessing the infrastructure of Telecom Italia’s Fibercop unit and vice-versa in so-called white areas, where public funding is being used to finance network deployments.

Telecom Italia stated the deal involves Open Fiber accessing “aerial infrastructure” and “access connections” to home from FiberCop.

In return, the operator plans to make Open Fiber service available to at least 500,000 customers.

Telecom Italia CEO Pietro Labriola stated the deal was “a further step forward in the execution of our asset enhancement strategy”.

The strategy involves Telecom Italia separating infrastructure assets from its service operations, with the plan set to be presented in early July.

Telecom Italia’s fibre deal with OpenFiber could be a precursor to a merger of FiberCop to create a single fibre network company in Italy. In April, Telecom Italia signed a non-disclosure agreement with state lender CDP to discuss the merger of its fixed network with Open Fiber.