FiberCop Will Bring Gigabit Fiber to 478,000 Homes: Won €712 Million Tender
Invitalia has awarded FiberCop a funding of up to €712.5 million to extend the ultra-broadband fiber optic network across the national territory. The company's board of directors, which manages the National Connectivity Fund (FNC) as the Implementing Partner of the Department for Digital Transformation of the Prime Minister's Office, approved the resolution on June 25, 2026.
The Fund originates from the ECOFIN Council Decision of November 27, 2025, and from the Implementation Agreement signed on February 4, 2026, between the Department for Digital Transformation and Invitalia. The initiative falls under Mission 1, Component 2, Investment 7 of the PNRR, the section of the Plan dedicated to digital infrastructures.
How the Contribution and Distribution by Lots Works
The tender that selected FiberCop provides for public contributions covering up to 70% of the eligible expenses for the construction of high-performance fixed networks with Gigabit capacity. This is not a general coverage: the funded interventions will need to guarantee, even during peak hours, a minimum speed of 1 Gbit/s for downloads and 200 Mbit/s for uploads for each address involved.
The offer presented by FiberCop, which was awarded the contract, aims to complete the interventions by 2030, with a total coverage reaching nearly 478,000 addresses (specifically, 477,521) distributed across seven geographical lots covering the whole country, including islands.
The largest lot, number 7, concerns Basilicata, Campania, Puglia, Calabria, and Sicily, with 91,921 addresses to be connected. Following is lot 1, Northern Tuscany, with 78,858 real estate units, while Emilia-Romagna, together with Marche and Umbria (lot 4), counts 72,033.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia, along with Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto in lot 3, totals 71,069 addresses. Piedmont, Aosta Valley, Liguria, and Lombardy (lot 6) total 57,401, followed by Abruzzo, Lazio, Molise, and Sardinia (lot 5) with 53,526. Closing the ranking is Southern Tuscany (lot 2), with 52,713 addresses involved.
The sum of the seven lots, indeed, returns the total of 477,521 addresses that FiberCop has committed to reaching by the 2030 deadline, a timeframe that still leaves ample room for planning construction sites on a national scale.
A Piece of the Ultra-Broadband Plan
The funding adds to other tools already activated in previous years to bridge the digital divide in areas of the country where fiber has never arrived or where the performance remains insufficient for the more intensive uses of connection, from smart working to high-definition streaming.
The mechanism chosen, that of a grant covering up to 70% of eligible costs, still leaves FiberCop with the burden of covering the remaining part of the investment, an aspect that confirms how the involvement of private capital remains central even in projects supported by the PNRR.
The question is: how quickly will the operator be able to translate the €712.5 million awarded into concrete construction sites, in a context where the implementation times for network infrastructures have often suffered delays compared to the original schedules of the Plan?