Broadband, there is a lack of workers for the excavations. Open Fiber: “Now we employ prisoners”

MILAN – Open Fiber pushes on the fiber with the aim of becoming “the nervous system of the country”. Like this Mario Rossetti, CEO of the group, who took over the powers last December 3 and has never stopped since then to recover the delays accumulated by the past management, starting with the white areas, or those in market failure. The 2017 Infratel races expected Open Fiber to reach coverage by 2020, but now the group is trying to make up for lost time. “In a few months we have closed 538 yards for FTTH fiber, 20% of what has been done in the last four years“, Rossetti said, recalling how the structure of the concession that requires the use of the procurement code and the initial bureaucratic difficulties weighed on the start of the works.

But now for the number one of Open Fiber, the risk of not respecting the plans “does not depend on money or on society, if today there is an issue that concerns Open fiber it is that of work: having the ability to ground all the work we have, also considering the time schedule for wiring the gray areas which are due to expire in 2026. It is a problem that affects the entire country “. In January, the group, which since its inception in 2017 has already made 4 billion investments to wire 14 thousand homes, at the end of the year received loans for 7.2 billion, and other lines, cash flows and resources to get to invest up to 11 billion euros.

In short, even Tim, and the possible single network risk getting bogged down by the lack of manpower. “We are ready to hire 1,500 people in the white areas tomorrow, and next year with the gray areas we would need 8,000 employees – Rossetti recalls – we formed a new company, asked all suppliers, signed an agreement with Autostrade per l’Italia and we even turned to prisons, to probe and study the possibility of reintegrating inmates and making them work on our construction sites. At the moment already four inmates from the Bollate prison are working on the Open Fiber construction sites, the company is studying the matter with the various competent ministries “. As for construction sites in large cities, “we are not late in the black areas – said Rossetti, recalling that for this reason the company” has decided to shift resources from the richer areas to the others “.