SINFI 4.0: “optical fibre” is no longer enough for Italy’s network cadastre

The field is called “transmission medium”. For years, in far too many as-built records, someone wrote “optical fibre” and stopped. In the data model of Italy’s national network cadastre that line has just become mandatory, and it no longer accepts a generic answer.

What AgID adopted, and when

With determination no. 129/2026 (14 July, published on the Agency’s transparency portal on the 15th) AgID adopted version 4.0 of the “Reference content specifications for the databases of utility networks and for the SINFI”, approved by the committee chaired by MIMIT, the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy, with representatives of the ministries, the competent authorities, AgID, the regions and the municipalities. The announcement is dated 20 July. The SINFI — the national register of network infrastructure — is the platform promoted by MIMIT and coordinated by the Department for Digital Transformation.

Three areas of change: integration of subsea elements for telecommunications and cabling infrastructure and networks; better handling of connected users on electricity networks; integration of the status attribute, common to all classes. The accompanying document sets one clear instruction: “avoid impacts on data already submitted and, where necessary, prepare a mapping plan to bring it into line”. Translated: what has been submitted is not thrown away, it is remapped. But remapping needs the data.

The line that changes work on site

In class TR_COM (line segment of the telecommunications and cabling network, 070701) there are only two changes. One is vertical position. The other is attribute TR_COM_TYC, “transmission medium”, which — in the words of the report — “becomes mandatory, and its domain is extended in conformity with the ITU-T standard”.

The domain now reads:

01 ITU-T standard optical fibre
- 0101 multimode fibres, G.651.1 — short distances, LANs, data centres
- 0102 standard single-mode fibres, G.652 and G.657 — FTTH, urban backbones, metropolitan networks
- 0103 specialised single-mode fibres, G.653, G.654, G.655 and G.656 — specific performance, submarine networks, DWDM, backbone
02 ethernet cable
95 other

This is not an academic classification. It is a fact you know with certainty at two moments only: when the drum is unpacked and the sheath marking is read, and when the fibre is spliced. After that, you either go back down the chamber or trust somebody’s memory. Whoever wrote “fibre” and closed the cover holds an information asset the cadastre no longer takes as it stands: it must be reconstructed, segment by segment. The difference between G.652 and G.657 is not a catalogue detail — it decides what bends that route will take — and now it also decides whether the submission passes.

Subsea starts at the first canal

Attribute 1200, “position relative to the surface”, common to the classes of Layer 07, is renamed “vertical position” and, alongside 01 overhead, 02 at grade and 03 buried, gains 04 underwater. That value links the materialised segment to a new tabular class: TR_COM_S (070704). It asks for the cable name, construction type (Light Weight, Light Weight Protected, Single Armor, Double Armor), date of entry into service, the company that laid it, fibre count, repair history, type of permit and the cable colour under the ANSI/TIA/EIA-598 standard — the same convention that is never quite universal.

Then there is ZO_ACQ (070801, sea and inland water zones), polygonal, with overlapping polygons allowed: type of area (sea, lake, watercourse), prohibition zones along the route (fishing, anchoring, transit), legal status of the areas crossed (inland waters, territorial waters, contiguous zone, EEZ, marine protected area, restricted area, military zone), risk factors, and the authority that issues the permits.

None of this concerns intercontinental cables alone. A crossing of a lake, an irrigation canal or a watercourse falls inside it. And the information already exists: it sits in the permit file, often on paper, almost never in the data model.

From “what is there” to “what condition it is in”

The third area is the Status-1 (0700) domain, which now reads: 01 in service, 02 under construction, 03 disused, 04 planned, 06 not in service, 07 voluntary installation of additional infrastructure, 95 other. It affects eight status attributes, from the housing infrastructure (INFR_RT_ST) to the segments of water, sewerage, electricity, gas, district heating, oil pipeline and telecommunications networks (TR_COM_STA).

A cadastre that records only what is in service says what is there. One that also records the disused, the planned and the ducts laid voluntarily during someone else’s trench says what condition the network is in, and what can be reused without opening the road again. Fill in half the domain and you hand over half the picture.

Why this should not wait

The SINFI is not a voluntary scheme. It is established by article 4 of legislative decree no. 33 of 15 February 2016, which also makes it the single online information point and requires physical infrastructure operators, public and private, to feed their databases into it; paragraph 2 adds the duty to notify a worksite opening at least ninety days in advance. Breaches of those duties are punished under article 10, paragraph 3, with an administrative fine of 5,000 to 50,000 euro.

The European frame, meanwhile, has moved: directive 2014/61/EU, which decree 33/2016 transposes, was repealed with effect from 11 May 2024 and replaced by regulation (EU) 2024/1309, applicable since 12 November 2025, which requires minimum georeferenced information to be accessible in electronic format through a single information point, with updates made available promptly. There is one direction of travel, and it does not lead to the scanned PDF.

What to add to the site data sheet today

Six items. They cost minutes in the field and they are worth a survey campaign.

The ITU-T category of the fibre, read from the sheath marking and checked against the delivery note: G.651.1, G.652, G.657 or one of the specialised grades, with a photo of the marking.
Vertical position per segment — overhead, at grade, buried, underwater — rather than one value spread across the whole route.
Status of the route and of every piece of infrastructure touched, including spare ducts laid in the same trench and left empty.
For every water crossing: water body and type of area, references and issuing authority of the permit, prohibitions along the route.
Cable identity: designation, construction type, sheath colour, fibre count, date of entry into service, who laid it.
Who surveyed it and when, with the identifier that ties the as-built line to the cadastre record.

The point.

A cadastre is worth no more than the worst datum in it. Version 4.0 raises the bar where the datum is actually born: in the chamber, on the drum, in the permit file. Documenting a network is not a formality to be closed at the end of the works from memory: it is a collection designed beforehand, with the right fields and written rules for completing them. That is how we work — measurement, certification and as-built documentation set up so that submission is an export, not a survey done twice.

Do you have to submit data to the SINFI, or put an existing network’s as-built back in order? Talk to an engineer: half an hour to work out which fields you are actually missing.