The Regional Administrative Court of Lazio has rejected a request by Italian ISP Fastweb to suspend an award of tenders to deploy broadband infrastructure in underserved areas of the country, Reuters writes, citing an unnamed source. The Italian government’s broadband vehicle Infratel is looking to offer a number of regional contracts to telcos to roll out high speed infrastructure, kicking off with the regions of Abruzzo, Molise, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Tuscany and Veneto. The Swisscom subsidiary had sought to postpone the contract awards, however, ahead of an appeal hearing on 14 December in which it is looking to overturn a clause which forbids companies from teaming up with rival telcos following the pre-qualification process. Fastweb also claims the tender process favours bidders such as Enel Open Fiber (EOF) whose operations are not vertically integrated.
Earlier this year Fastweb formed a broadband joint venture with Telecom Italia (TIM) under the name Fiberflash under which the two firms plan to collaborate on the deployment of high speed fibre-optic networks across Italy. As reported by CommsUpdate earlier this week, TIM has launched its own legal appeal against the terms of the tender which it says are discriminatory as they would regulate pricing only for TIM due to its status as former monopoly operator.