On ICT law, politics and other digital stuff
Once AT&T retired its offer, the future of Telecom Italia seems to rely upon Intesa Sanpaolo’s bid (probably the biggest italian bank). Should this scenario become true, the result would be a sort of Zaibatsu.
The interesting thing is that to avoid the monopoly, the Italian governement and the Ministry of communication, On. Gentiloni (Margherita) are creating an enormous conglomerate.
Will that helps promoting free market?
Sometimes they strike back. Italian Prime Minister on. Romano Prodi and the Ministry of communication, on. Paolo Gentiloni are talking again about the idea of “unbundle” the telephone network propriety from the service provided through the lines. It seems that the chosen model would be the UK way: a public company “owns” the wires, while the operators (including Telecom Italia) will compete on the market services.
It might have been the former mr. Prodi’s governement mistake to sell Telecom Italia the telephone network, but nevertheless it doesn’t seem that fair – now – to take the network back, thus reducing ex lege the value of a company. This “pendulum-based” approach (swinging back and forth from private to public ownership) it is not a good signal for both the market and the foreign investor who will continue staring at Italy as an unreliable country to do business with (or in.)
Truth is that Italy is paying the almost total lack – in the last 15 years – of a telecommunications political strategy. Television market has been, is and will be politicians main concern, while lasting everything else back.
Pretending that a problem doesn’t exist is not an option, because – it is just matter of time – the bill always come at the end of the dinner.
That’s incredible! Fastweb answered the Data Protection Authority questions by claiming to ignore ? who was calling me on its behalf, and not to have any personal data belonging to me. A few days after (March, 26) I got a NEW CALL from “Fastweb Commercial Department” trying to sell something.
I’ve reported againg this new fact to the Authority, and now I’m really courious to see who – between Fastweb and the Authority – is better “nuts-equipped”.
More to come…
On Feb. 9, 2007 the Civil Court of Rome, under the Italian enforcement of the EU 2004/48 directive, issued a preliminary ruling (technically speaking, in Italian, “ordinanza cautelare”) ordering Telecom Italia to disclose the identity of about 3.000 people allegedly committing the “infamous” crime of exchanging copyrighted material through P2P network. The Court order was “backed” by a statement from the plaintiff – a German based recording label – claiming that a private cyber-investigation revealed that Telecom Italia’s users were involved in such illegal behaviour.
Continue reading “European Union, Copyright Lobbies and Italian ISP’s. The Big Brawl.”
In a previous post I talked about the complaint I sent the Data Protection Authority about Fastweb (an Italian Telco maverick) phone SPAM. Following my letter, the Authority asked Fastweb to provide justification and additional information about that issue. Continue reading “Fastweb answer to Data Protection Authority”