Italian operator gets its 5G motor running and heads out on the highway. Just don't expect it to arrive in Calabria anytime soon.

Iain Morris, International Editor

July 8, 2019

4 Min Read
Telecom Italia cranks up 5G with three-city launch

Telecom Italia has pulled the starter cord on its sputtering 5G engine and taken the next-generation technology into the cities of Rome, Turin and Naples, where customers can already buy new 5G smartphones made by Samsung and Xiaomi.

Most residents of Italy would be advised not to get overly excited. The Italian operator has revealed that only about one in five people will be able to access its 5G service by 2021 as it slowly buses technicians around Italy to build out the supporting networks.

Announced late Friday, the service will go live in six more cities this year, said the Italian phone incumbent, and support connection speeds up to 2 Gbit/s. Monthly service rates start at €30 ($33.70).

Figure 1: TIM showed speed test results at its 5G services launch presentation. TIM showed speed test results at its 5G services launch presentation.

The update follows the launch of 5G services this week by the UK's Vodafone and Germany's Deutsche Telekom and comes amid doubts about the return on investment associated with the high-speed mobile technology.

Last year, Italy's operators surprised market watchers when they forked out roughly €6.6 billion ($7.4 billion) for new 5G spectrum licenses -- some €4 billion ($4.5 billion) more than government authorities had expected.

The expensive outlay has forced Telecom Italia into a network-sharing partnership with Vodafone as it tries to minimize the cost of rolling out an entirely new technology in a tough market environment.

Its mobile revenues in Italy tumbled 11.4% in the first quarter of 2019, to €916 million ($1.03 billion), compared with the year-earlier period, due to various competitive and regulatory challenges.

The arrival last year of new entrant Iliad was held partly responsible for the sales decline, with Telecom Italia losing around 939,000 mobile subscribers in the year ending March 2019. Figures available on the operator's website show there were nearly 22.3 million "human lines" in service at the end of the first quarter.

While Telecom Italia remains very profitable, its indebtedness makes the pressure on sales a long-term concern for investors. Last year, net debt was equal to about 3.3 times the company's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization -- a high ratio by comparison with most other major European telcos.

After spending nearly €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion) on its 5G spectrum licenses, Telecom Italia plans to slash capital expenditure in Italy this year despite powering up 5G services. Overall spending in its domestic market will fall from about €5.6 billion ($6.3 billion) in 2018 (including license fees) to around €3 billion ($3.4 billion) in 2019, the operator has indicated in recent financial statements.

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Even discounting the spectrum auction, the forecast represents a sharp reduction on previous years, with Telecom Italia spending €3.7 billion ($4.2 billion) in 2016 and almost €4.6 billion ($5.2 billion) in 2017.

The company explained the drop by arguing that "coverage levels" for its fixed and mobile networks had already been achieved. Yet blanketing countries with 5G networks could be even more expensive than deploying older 4G technologies, according to some analysts and telecom executives.

Among other things, 5G could require additional mobile sites to support connections over higher frequency ranges, where coverage can be a constraint. Before its own 5G auction, Germany's Deutsche Telekom said it would add another 8,000 mobile sites between 2018 and 2021, bringing its national total to about 36,000.

Disclosing some concrete details of its own coverage plans, Telecom Italia said it would "cover" about 120 cities, 200 tourist destinations and 245 industrial districts by 2021. But this equates to just 22% of the population, it added.

This year, it aims to make 5G services available in Milan, Bologna, Verona, Florence, Matera and Bari. The 2019 rollout plans include 30 tourist destinations, 50 industrial districts and 30 projects for "big businesses."

Consumers can choose a TIM Advance 5G package, with prices starting at €29.99 ($33.70) for a 50-gigabyte monthly allowance, or a TIM Advance Top that costs €49.99 ($56.15) for an allowance of 100 gigabytes. Business customers are being offered the Senza Limiti 5G service, priced at €60 ($67.40) a month for 100 gigabytes.

Investors are unmoved. Telecom Italia's share price is up 0.4% in Milan this morning and has lost 24% of its value in the last 12 months. Shares are down 43% in the last five years.

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— Iain Morris, International Editor, Light Reading

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About the Author(s)

Iain Morris

International Editor, Light Reading

Iain Morris joined Light Reading as News Editor at the start of 2015 -- and we mean, right at the start. His friends and family were still singing Auld Lang Syne as Iain started sourcing New Year's Eve UK mobile network congestion statistics. Prior to boosting Light Reading's UK-based editorial team numbers (he is based in London, south of the river), Iain was a successful freelance writer and editor who had been covering the telecoms sector for the past 15 years. His work has appeared in publications including The Economist (classy!) and The Observer, besides a variety of trade and business journals. He was previously the lead telecoms analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, and before that worked as a features editor at Telecommunications magazine. Iain started out in telecoms as an editor at consulting and market-research company Analysys (now Analysys Mason).

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