Telecoms: Italy

According to Finmeccanica, the Italian Government will finally unlock funds for a big nationwide TETRA-based project.
As reported from the company’s own blog:

The new government must “quickly” unlock the 500
mln euro previously allocated for the supplying of the crypted TLC system
‘Tetra’ to the Italian police forces, said Selex Communications
(Finmeccanica Group) CEO Massimo Tucci. “A first decision was taken in June
2005, and a second in March 2006: the sum has already been transferred to
the Interior Ministry, we only need the minister’s signature to ratify it
and allocate the fund”. “To us, Tetra can be what GSM has been for
Scandinavian countries: if we’ll be up to it, we can really give new
momentum to the national economy. We don’t fear competition, but we can’t
affor to waste more time”

In fiscal year 2005, Elitel had revenues of 155 M€, 25% of which came from wholesale service, 33% from small business retail, 14% from large accounts, 19% from premium services and 9% from call center operations.
Elitel claims to serve 2.274 large accounts in Italy, of which 773 already use its VoIP services.

Starting with the next ‘Serie A’ football season in September 2006, Telecom Italia will offer its premium content with a ‘converged’ subscription model. Through a single subscription, Telecom Italia’s customers will be able to watch live football matches delivered over IPTV (ADSL + set-top box), broadband connections (ADSL + PC) and mobile (DVB-H equipped handsets).

Elitel confirmed its ambition to become a full fledged virtual mobile network operator. So far it has announced the availability of a converged fixed-mobile service based on dual mode Wi-Fi/GSM handsets, but the company is confident to sign a wholesale agreement with a major mobile network operator in the next few months in order to be able to offer also unified fixed-mobile billings to its business customers.
The company also announced that anytime soon it will sign a roaming agreement regarding Wi-Fi hotspots.

Elitel today announced the availability of a converged fixed-mobile service targeted to its business customers.
Thanks to a dual-mode Wi-Fi/GSM handset supplied by Qtek, Elitel is offering the converged option to its business VoIP customers.
A similar converged offer targeted to business customers has been recently announced also by BT Albacom.
However, for both solutions the fixed and mobile bills will be kept separated, because none of the fixed line operators can act as mobile virtual network operator yet.

In fiscal year 2006 ended on 31 March 2006, Vodafone had revenues of 8,324 M€ (+2% ). EBITDA was 4,334 M€ (-0.5%) and EBIT 3,197 M€ (-0.5%).
Vodafone Italia claims to have at end of March 2006 24.056.000 (+6.9%) total customers and 2.928.000 UMTS customers in Italy.
ARPU was down to 28.5 € (-1 €) and churn rate went up to 18.7 % (+ 1.5%).