Equal rules for everyone. For telecommunications operators as well as for big tech. This is the main request that comes from the 5G&Co Everithing is connected conference organized in Rome by Cnit, the national inter-university consortium for telecommunications.
It is an appeal that also came from the CEO and general manager of Tim, Pietro Labriola, who asks for the same rules for satellite connectivity as for fiber or ADSL, for calls via WhatsApp or messenger as for telephone operators.
"I don't want to start a rearguard battle - declared Labriola - by saying let's regulate everything. I'm making a provocation: let's not regulate anyone. If we want this sector to have a future, the rules must be the same for everyone, even in the sectors that are converging". The same message came from the president of the Cnit - National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications, Nicola Blefari Melazzi. "There are objective elements of difficulty faced by telecommunications operators", he explained, the first is "a very strong competition on costs due to precise choices of the European Commission" which asked to increase the number of operators. If there are 40-50 operators in Europe and only 3 or 4 in the United States or China, "we understand that there is a distortion". It is not "easy" to reduce them, "for every nation it is difficult to give up reference operators also for reasons of sovereignty and security", said Blefari Melazzi.
"A second important point on which we can intervene is - he added - legislation and regulation because it is a highly regulated and penalized sector compared to others", finally there are "contingent aspects such as the cost of the spectrum and the cost of 'power".
Excessive competition as the origin of the sector's difficulties is also described by the general secretary of Uilcom Uil, Salvo Ugliarolo. For this reason, the trade unionist gave a "generally positive, albeit premature" opinion on the merger between Fastweb and Vodafone Italia which "is in line with what we have always said: there are too many operators in a saturated market" and "the birth of a great operator solves part of the problem".
Another impulse will arrive, according to the Minister of Business and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, "thanks to the review of the emission limits of electromagnetic fields, awaited by the TLC operator sector for over thirty years".
"5G is a consolidated reality in the telecommunications and digital transition landscape", declared Urso, defining it as "a development driver that is experiencing a strong level of implementation in business processes and whose verticals of use are increasingly crucial for competitiveness of the Italian production system, as well as for the services provided to citizens and our communities, with a view to achieving a true gigabit society".