Corrado Calabro, head of Italy's telecoms regulator Agcom, has urged domestic telecoms operators to develop a common project for the development of a next-generation broadband network, Dow Jones reports. In the regulator's annual speech to parliament, Calabro said the two separate plans recently announced by Telecom Italia on one hand, and a group of competitors on the other, need to converge under one nationwide plan, guided by the Italian government and with clear rules set by the regulator. Telecom Italia recently dismissed calls for joining a rival broadband project, notifying the regulator that it will go ahead with its own plans to offer ultra broadband services to 50 percent of the Italian population by 2018. Telecom Italia plans to expand its 100 megabit fibre-optic infrastructure to half of the Italian population, as part of an overall investment project of EUR 7 billion in its fixed-line network upgrade in the next three years. Rival operators Fastweb, Vodafone, Wind and Tiscali intend to invest EUR 2.5 billion to bring broadband to Italy's 15 largest cities over the next five years.
