Telecom network operator TIM last week announced significant reduction in Opex and cut in Capex in the third quarter of 2016.
TIM announced that the Capex (capital expenditure) amounted to R$1,122 million (–4 percent) in Q3 2016 compared to R$975 million.
The net investment done by the telecom network operator till the third quarter of 2016 totaled to R$2,807 million.
The net Capex is down by 14.3 percent as compared to the previous year period.
This is in line with the group announcing that it will accumulate €1.6 billion in Capex, Opex savings by end of 2018 by negotiations with telecom vendors and projects optimization.
The company, which touched the zenith of Capex in 2015, has achieved a drop in Capex in-spite of strong results with 4G coverage leadership using spectrum reframing and carrier aggregation, 3G coverage catch up and fiber network expansion.
TIM announced that it has increased deployments to achieve 56 percent FTTC coverage target for the year by October.
TIM had earlier announced investments in Italy of around 12 billion euros, out of which 6.7 billion will be dedicated to emerging technologies like NGN, LTE, Cloud and platforms, Sparkle and Transformation.
TIM is set to expand the coverage to span 84 percent of the population with fiber optics and 98 percent of the population with the 4G LTE mobile network by 2018.
TIM had earlier announced that it is working with broadband provider Fastweb to invest a total of EUR 1.2 billion. This is to speed up the rollout of FTTH technology in 29 cities across Italy.
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The network aims to offer 1Gbps connections to more than 3 million homes by 2020.
TIM also plans to cover more than 60 percent using FTTC and above 96 percent using LTE by this year-end.
Also, it has observed pace in its FTTH rollout, currently offering services to 1 million premises.
The FTTC connection of TIM is supported by EVDSL technology enabling speeds of 200 megabits per second.
Also, TIM intends to acquire a hike in the NGN customers to 10 percent from the current 5 million to 5.5 million by the year-end 2018.
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The current FTTC coverage speed of TIM is 80,000 new homes per week, while the FTTH rollout speed is 20,000 new household per week.
In September, TIM upselling to fiber contributed resulted in a double-digit year-on-year growth on fixed broadband gross additions.
TIM revealed that it is also focusing on domestic investment with more than €4.5 billion overtime Capex in NGN and LTE to be deployed in 2015-2018.
TIM revealed that it will utilize its size and expanding capacity to bargain for lower prices with better quality and condition from its suppliers.
This will lead to the group meeting out its capex targets, having already crossed the 56 percent FTTC coverage target for the year in October.
Also, the LTE one-off target of 95 percent was met in August, leading to TIM updating both the targets for 2016 year-end.
Vina Krishnan
editor@telecomlead.com
