TIM keeps it in the family with new FiberCop CEO

TIM has named the Chief Executive of its new FiberCop business and it’s someone who is very familiar with the inner workings of the Italian telco but, sadly, not called Tim.

Carlo Filangieri will lead FiberCop, a business TIM is in the process of setting up to house and run its fixed access operations.

“Filangieri…has long professional experience in the TIM Group,” the telco said in a short statement announcing his appointment.

That’s an understatement. Filangieri joined Telecom Italia, as it was then known, in a network planning role in mid-1994. Since then he has held many and varied roles within the telco group, mainly in engineering and infrastructure at its domestics operations. However, he also spent a couple of years as CTO of TIM Brasil – and still serves on the operator’s board – before returning to Italy in early 2015 at VP level.

The past few years have seen him take on a number of high-level positions at TIM, including EVP Operations, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, and his current role, Head of Wholesale Market. He is also a board member at Flash Fiber, an 80:20 fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) joint venture between TIM and Fastweb that will be merged into FiberCop.

TIM made no comment about Filangieri’s appointment, other than to highlight his experience in Italy and Brazil, but it’s clear that the telco has gone for a safe pair of hands to lead its new fibre business.

FiberCop will be majority-owned by TIM with a 58% stake, while investment group KKR will hold 37.5% and Fastweb 4.5% in return for its 20% Flash Fiber stake. The business is due to launch imminently.

Ultimately, it is destined to form part of the Italian government’s single network plan, that will bring together the incumbent telco’s infrastructure with that of Open Fiber, once the latter sorts out its own well-documented ownership issues. It’s a plan that TIM initially opposed, but it came round to the idea last summer after brokering a deal that will let it have majority control of the business, albeit with governance shared by the other parties.

And who better to help TIM stay in control than a FiberCop chief executive who has spent more than a quarter of a century working for the company?