For Italtel comes the last call .... not disappear ... Two bets for the company is likely to remain a victim of the property with which he reacted in the last 56 years to the gradual decline in investment by Telecom Italy
By: CARLI STEFANO
SOURCE:
A year ago, at the end of 2008, there were 2,360, then the volume of sales continued to decline and twelve months later, in late 2009. 2100 had become: the first effect of a crash diet for almost 300 units. Now the final plan developed by CEO Umberto De Julio, arrived in October 2008, speaks of a further 500 redundancies to bring the total employment of Italtel, the former jewel of the Italian telecoms, 1600. In short, almost 800 fewer people in eighteen months. More than Glaxo (but researchers here are not all the schooling rate is still high), more than half of Termini Imerese. It is not the Fiat Italtel. Its 2008 turnover was 467 million, a lot lower than the 546 million in 2007.
say that Italtel has been the jewel of the Italian telecommunications is not rhetoric. Even today, two out of three telephone lines in Italy are run by branded equipment Italtel (the one that moves forward is two-thirds and one third AlcatelLucent Ericsson). It 's the result of large investments in the Telecom network in the eighties. One may then think that the current crisis due to the fact that Italtel has failed to pass the time of the public monopoly and public holdings of open market after 1998, but it is not. The last great industrial success of Italtel is dated 2003: the year in which Telecom Italy, first among the world's largest telephone group, decided to spend his entire transport network to IP. It was epochal innovation, efficiency and cost savings led to management by cutting two thirds of the need for major transit exchanges. It was a success made in Italy. The last, however.
Specialization Italtel is in fact the so-called softswitching, the transformation of the old telephone exchanges by the loop system to the packet. There came first, did those of Telecom after which it stopped. He made the mistake of continuing to wait for the orders of a Telecom has instead continued to cut the budget for investment and maintenance. Switching now absorbs on average less than 5% of the budgets of telecom technology. A budget for Telecom Italy in 2009 was 400 million.
has not yet been able to go abroad when the market was not closed by the global giants. And it is paradoxical that the company is now just a quarter of its foreign turnover while old companies that made the maintenance of the network for Telecom, the ones that repair the damage and changed the stakes today are actually much stronger and with a good half of its turnover abroad.
Italtel has not been able to then move to other products. But not even take advantage of the excellence of its disposal: with Telecom Italy, which was among the first operators to believe nell'Adsl, Italtel has never thought of entering in the production of modems and other systems for broadband. Which in return makes the Pirelli Broadband Solutions, in which the Telecom Group has entrusted the development of some systems for users of broadband networks at the time of management Tronchetti. It was instead cast in the production decoder for the satellite TV platform Stream at the time of Telecom, but it's an adventure ended early.
Italtel faces today in its sector giants such as Huawei, Ericsson, NokiaSiemens Networks, AlcatelLucent, Cisco. A market with a giant like Nortel has just failed, in which Ericsson and NokiaSiemens are increasingly moving services (Ericsson by network now draws only half of its revenues, Italtel still 80%).
Even what was supposed to be a great opportunity for Italtel to enter the large telecoms around the world has finally proved a missed opportunity: the entry of Cisco, the world number one IP router, a shareholder in 2004 has not made the most dynamic Italian company. And perhaps it has also slowed the development possibilities. Italtel has been the seal of a commercial alliance between Telecom and Cisco, and little more. On the other hand, over the years, have been rejected the advances of other groups such as Ericsson and Siemens, which may not, however, had different intentions from those of Cisco. Or those of a reality on the rise, as the California Juniper Networks, a competitor to Cisco routers that Italtel has tried to involve in the development of some solutions to be included in its systems, but without success.
Now the streets are two ahead of Italtel. On the one hand continue to engineer systems for telephone networks, imagine that is, products made primarily of software components and materials purchased for most Asian markets, to continue working in telephone exchanges that sort of voice traffic (still not) and data cables that pass over. And trying to fit into the historic transition of networks from copper to fiber optics. The second way is that the 'advice' that act as a "system integrator" specializing in solving the needs of the communication systems of large companies. A road, the latter part has already been done in recent years, with a customer base but that is only in Italian and with a strong DNA 'public'. Eni, Enel, large banks such as UniCredit or MPS.
Both roads promise to be uphill. The first, the product sees Italtel to deal with the lost time. There are border areas where Italian companies operating in dynamic and growing. Coma, the IDF, IDF, one hundred employees, 50 million on revenues but active on a new frontier as the optical frequencies in several colors to pass on the same fiber: a system to literally divide into four thin hair that is those optical fibers.
Sure, the company would benefit from safe to start a real investment on new optical networks. But always remember that anyone willing to invest will not overpay in the name of the country. It remains only open sea in the already crowded market of system integrators. But even here Italtel will have to play alone. The idea of \u200b\u200bcreating an Italian pole has no enthusiasm anywhere. Neither of potential aggregators, nor in its Italtel. What if it were to integrate today would ultimately disappear. Better to try to recover positions before speaking. Hoping that everything does not turn into a war between 'dwarf'.
