Italy 1 Gigabit Plan: Deadline Passed, What Changes for Businesses
3 min read
30 June 2026 was the date on the calendar: by that day, the Italy 1 Gigabit Plan — the PNRR (Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan) measure designed to bring connectivity of at least 1 Gbit/s to the country’s grey areas — was meant to complete coverage of around 8.3 million property units, 6.3 million via FTTH and 2 million via FWA. The deadline has passed, and the real picture is more nuanced: a substantial share of addresses has been covered and tested, but for roughly 700,000 addresses the Government has agreed a rescheduling with the European Commission — excluding them from the PNRR scope and recovering them by 2030 through new projects, funded by the savings generated (around €700 million), using mixed technologies: FTTH, FWA or satellite. For those waiting for fibre, and for those building it, it is worth understanding what this means in practice.
If you are a business in a grey area
The first thing to do is to check your address: covered and ready to activate, covered but not yet tested, or deferred to the new scope. The answer changes the strategy:
- Covered: activating it is the easy part; the critical issue is the quality of the internal termination. The operator’s connection reaches the wall socket: from the delivery point to your cabinets, the internal run is your responsibility — and that is where the problems that later get blamed “on the fibre” actually concentrate.
- Deferred: four years is a long time for a business. Concrete alternatives exist, and they cost less than commonly assumed: a dedicated fibre run to the nearest point of presence (laying and splicing along a private or licensed route), a professional microwave radio link as a transitional solution, or a business-class FWA connection while waiting for the 2030 plan. The right choice depends on distances, permits and actual requirements: it is decided on a site survey, not off a catalogue.
- Uncertain: do not wait for the perfect map. An hour of technical verification on actual coverage, available routes and timescales is worth more than months of waiting.
If you are an operator or a network contractor
The rescheduling is also reshaping the technical labour market. The 700,000 addresses come back into play with new tenders and new players — the National Connectivity Fund has already been awarded — and mixed technologies mean different types of sites: more short runs, more reuse of existing infrastructure, more field splicing on networks that are already partly built. At the same time, the section already covered enters the phase where quality shows: mass activations, faults, and rework on splices done in a hurry during the rush years.
This is the kind of work where the difference is measured in decibels: splices done to the highest standard, bidirectional certification, as-built documentation that is actually delivered. The teams that can hold this standard — and prove it — will have work for years, from FTTH sites to the private networks that the public plan will never cover.
The lesson for everyone
The public plan reaches as far as it reaches; your company’s network is yours. Waiting for the right coverage is only a strategy if waiting costs less than connecting — and that is a calculation made with real figures: metres of route, permits, fees, the cost of the current disruption. We do this free of charge, with a site survey.
Has your address been left out, or is the fibre there but not performing as it should? Talk to an engineer: half an hour to understand the real options.