If, as widely expected, Italian operators are required to return to billing fixed line customers on a 30-day rather than a 28-day basis, the resulting savings will be around EUR 21 a year, according to a study by price comparison site Sos Tariffe. The average cost of a fibre or ADSL bill would amount to EUR 332 a year if the change is enforced, some 6.4 percent lower than the average price of EUR 354 for bills charged from February 2016 to March 2017. Last month, Sos Tariffe reported that the average monthly price of a landline including ADSL or fibre in Italy has soared by 29.4 percent over the past two years, in part due to the billing cycle changes.
Italy's ruling Democratic Party (PD) last month submitted an amendment to a recently-approved tax decree requesting a ban on the practice and threatening heavy fines after Italy's industry minister Carlo Calenda described the practice of calculating fixed line invoices on the basis of a 28-day period as “unacceptable”. Vodafone Italia’s CEO Aldo Bisio subsequently announced that the operator would scrap its 28-day billing practice and return to a traditional 30-day cycle as quickly as possible.
