Who holds the title to supply a fibre network? The general authorisation the specification never checks

A public authority receives a proposal from an operator to run a new fibre link out to an outlying office. A company signs a connectivity contract that includes a dedicated last mile to its own warehouse. In both cases, before signing, who checks that the operator actually holds the title to supply an electronic communications network? Not the technical specification: that describes fibres, splices, optical budget — not the right to offer the service. The title sits elsewhere, and not in one place only.

The activity is free, but not unconditionally

Italy’s Electronic Communications Code — Legislative Decree 1 August 2003, no. 259 — opens Article 11, in force in its current text from 8 May 2024, with a permissive principle: “The activity of supplying electronic communications networks or services is free, subject to the conditions laid down in this decree.” But that freedom carries a precise condition for anyone installing or operating a fibre-optic network. Article 104(1)(b), in force in its current text from 28 April 2024, lists among the activities for which general authorisation “is in every case necessary” the “installation or operation of an electronic communications network on physical support, by carrier current or optical systems, except as provided for in Article 105(2)(a).” A fibre network built to supply a service to third parties does not escape this requirement merely by being passive.

The notification that stands in as a self-certified start-of-activity notice

General authorisation is not a permit the Ministry issues after a lengthy review: it arises from a declaration made by the firm itself. Article 11(2) puts it in one line: supplying networks “is subject to a general authorisation, which follows from submission of the notification referred to in paragraph 4.” That notification, paragraph 4 explains, “constitutes a self-certified start-of-activity notice” — a genuine SCIA, carrying the supplier’s name, legal form, address, a contact person, a description of the networks or services and the expected start date. The firm may exercise the rights deriving from the general authorisation “immediately after the notification” (paragraph 3): it does not wait for a written go-ahead before offering the service.

Sixty days, and two separate registers

The Ministry’s check comes afterwards, not before. Paragraph 7 of the same Article 11 sets the deadline and its consequence: “the Ministry, within and no later than sixty days of submission of the notification […], verifies of its own motion whether the required conditions and requirements are met and, where applicable, issues a reasoned measure […] prohibiting continuation of the activity.” Until then — and even afterwards, if the Ministry does not intervene — the firm operates lawfully. The same sentence adds a double obligation no specification ever names: “The Ministry shall publish the information relating to the declarations submitted on its website. Firms holding authorisation are required to register in the register of communications operators referred to in Article 1 of Law 31 July 1997, no. 249.” Two registers, two bodies: the Ministry’s register of suppliers, arising from the same notification, and the ROC kept by AGCOM, a separate, later obligation. An operator can appear in one without showing up as current in the other.

The same title is also needed to apply for excavation

The title does not stay a remote administrative fact, far from the worksite: it is the basis on which the right to install physical infrastructure itself rests. Article 14, in force in its current text from the same date, 8 May 2024, puts this in writing: on request, the Ministry issues within seven days a communication attesting to the notification submitted, stating the conditions under which “an undertaking that supplies electronic communications networks or services by virtue of a general authorisation is entitled to request” rights to install infrastructure, negotiate interconnection, or obtain access from other authorities or operators. Where laying the network requires excavation and occupation of public land, Article 49 — in force from 21 April 2026 — requires submission of “a specific application […] to the local authority or to the public body owning the land” (paragraph 1): the grant of authorisation, or the deemed consent after thirty days that we have already covered for permits under the EU Gigabit Infrastructure Regulation, “entails authorisation to carry out the excavation […] as well as the grant of the public land or subsoil required” (paragraph 6). A worksite authorised by the local council does not, on its own, say whether whoever opened it also held the upstream title.

The data that does not exist in one place

Anyone signing a network-supply specification, or accepting a run laid by a third-party operator, should be able to answer one simple question: did this operator hold the title, on that day, for that run? The notification submitted and the information published sit on the Ministry’s website — if you know where to look, and if no prohibition order has since been issued and stayed poorly visible. Registration in the register of communications operators sits with AGCOM, in a separate list with its own update cycle. The supply contract and the specification stay in administration, with whoever commissioned the work. The excavation application and its outcome — an express decision or deemed consent — sit in the local council’s files, not the Ministry’s. If the physical laying was subcontracted, the requirements of whoever actually sent the crew on site sit with the executing firm, not the operator holding the authorisation. And the route actually laid ends up, when it does, in an as-built record rarely cross-checked against the SINFI register. Five places, five different bodies: none of them, alone, confirms that the run in front of you has a valid title behind it.

What we do not know

This is not legal advice. We have not checked whether, for your specific operator or run, the Ministry has issued a prohibition order within the sixty days set out in paragraph 7, nor whether a registration is suspended or cancelled: these are checks to make case by case, on primary sources, not to assume from an article. We have not read the regulations by which the Ministry may set specific regimes for particular categories of networks or services: if one applies to your case, the procedure described here changes. Anyone drafting a specification on this basis should have the operator’s standing verified by someone with direct access to both registers, not by a search engine.

The two axes, on this subject

The specification and the supply contract should carry the clause almost nobody writes down today: the reference details of the notification submitted to the Ministry and the date of registration in the register of communications operators, as verifiable attachments — not as a generic statement of being an authorised operator under the law. At acceptance — before signature, not once the works are finished — those details are checked against what the Ministry has published and what appears in the AGCOM register, tied to a specific firm and a specific date, not to a logo printed on a quote.

Notifications to the Ministry, ROC registrations, contracts, excavation applications, subcontracts and as-built records become, with CSIDIA, the group’s other company, a single map on which an AI checks — before a worksite opens — whether the upstream title exists and covers that run, while the crew works knowing who may dig that day. Within the client’s own perimeter: on-premises on self-contained machines with no deep integration, or a dedicated cloud with a data centre in Italy, always under shared management. It is the same check we bring for a telecoms operator or a public body that subcontracts the splicing.

From the site survey, at no cost, comes the relevant list — notification to the Ministry, registration in the register of communications operators, excavation application, subcontract, as-built — with, for each item, what the record shows and where it is written today. Blank boxes included: it stays yours even if we do not go on to work together.

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