Tlc, reduction of contributions for licensed frequencies: the amendment to the Budget Law arrives

17:40, 12/04/2021

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A big step forward to bring equality and growth to the telecommunications market in Italy. The deputy Michele Gubitosa (M5S) has just tabled an amendment to the Budget Law (101-bis) that aims to reduce the contributions for the granting of rights to use the licensed frequencies, in favor of small and medium telecommunications operators.

A reduction that is a horse of Assoprovider, the association of independent providers, destined to have an extraordinary impact for the entire sector of small and medium telecommunications operators: more market growth, more job opportunities and the reduction of the digital divide, thanks to theincrease in bandwidth available on the backbones of Internet providers.

“The cost of point-to-point frequencies causes a distortion of the market. The quantity discount mechanism, according to which the more customers an operator has and the more discount he has on frequencies, causes a difference of 400% between the administrative contribution paid by a small operator and that paid by a large user of the same identical public good ” , complaint Dino Bortolotto, president of Assoprovider.

To this is added another worrying aspect, administrative contributions are the highest in Europe, 10 times higher than those required for other countries “.

Amendment 101 – bis

The amendment to the Budget Law presented by the deputy Michele Gubitosa, for some time sensitive to the causes of the association, aims to reduce the contribution for the licensed frequencies, for companies that provide the service to end users in numbers equal to or less than 50 thousand. In particular, here is how the costs of the frequencies will be divided, according to the amendment:

“1) Euro 2 for each MHz in the frequency range above 14 Ghz. 2) Euro 4 for each MHz in the frequency range between 14 Ghz or less and 10 GHz or more; 3) Euro 8 for each MHz in the frequency range from less than 10 GHz to 6 GHz; 4) Euro 16 for each MHz in the frequency range below 6 GHz. “

“We hope that the political forces are ready to support this amendment which has already met the favor not only of operators, but also of authorities, such as AGCOM. This is a necessary measure, even more today, in a delicate moment in the country that needs more digitization, both on the business side and on the private side ”, continues Bortolotto.

The safeguarding of jobs and new opportunities

If the amendment were passed, there would be a real revolution in the telecommunications market in Italy, favoring small and medium-sized players who will be able to offer a higher quality connection in the so-called market failure areas.

But most of all, it will serve to create jobs and safeguard them, solving many problems of the sector at once, including those of equipment manufacturers which today are unable to sell them to third parties, precisely because of the high level of contributions.

Last month, the association had already sent a letter to Minister of Economic Development, Stefano Patuanelli, asking for the extension of the 75% discount on the use of frequencies, also to operators with less than 50 thousand users.

“We ask the Minister to intervene urgently to make the licensed frequencies a public good, which are a really available tool to combat the digital divide and to put an end to the enormous distortion of competition between large national operators and small local operators”, reads the downloadable letter. here.

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