⁍ Vodafone, Comcast unit SKY and WindTre urged Italy to create a single broadband communications network.

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⁍ Rome signed off on a plan to create a national unified fast broadband network in August.

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⁍ Telecom Italia (TIM), Italy’s biggest phone group, could end up with too much sway over it.

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– Italy’s plan to create a single high-speed broadband network is running into problems. The country’s biggest phone company, Telecom Italia, is planning to merge its grid assets with those of smaller rival Open Fiber in a move that would give TIM control over the network, the Wall Street Journal reports. But Vodafone, Comcast, and WindTre—three of the country’s four big broadband providers—say the plan doesn’t go far enough. “The three CEOs hope the network plan can be developed in line with its premises, giving rise to a non-vertically integrated operator,” they said in a statement after a meeting with TIM and state lender CDP yesterday, per Reuters. The government says the plan, which still needs to be approved by the European Commission, is necessary to prevent TIM from exercising too much control over the network. “One can imagine that you have a nationwide wholesaler. That is definitely imaginable,” EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said last week. “The question of course is (whether) that is an independent wholesaler or the wholesaler also has ties vertically to retailers,” she said. “That would be a competition assessment and that would be our approach no matter what country it would be concerned with.”