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Telecom Italia S.p.A.
Telecom Italia sells phone, internet, and mobile services to people, businesses, and the government in Italy and Brazil.
Telecom Italia is Italy's phone company — the one that owns the copper and fiber lines running into millions of homes, and the network that carries your mobile calls and data. It sells landline service, broadband internet, mobile plans, and pay-TV to ordinary households, and offers cloud, data, and security services to companies and the public sector. It is based in Milan, and the Italian government is its single largest shareholder.
The business splits into three main pieces. In Italy, there is the retail side, selling fixed and mobile services to consumers and businesses, and the wholesale side, renting access to its network to rival operators who do not want to build their own lines. In Brazil, it controls TIM Brasil, one of the country's big three mobile carriers, which brings in growth that the mature Italian market does not. The retail business faces fierce price competition from rivals like Vodafone and WindTre, and the wholesale arm is regulated: the regulator forces Telecom Italia to let competitors use its network at fair prices, because that infrastructure is hard to duplicate. For years the company carried heavy debt and struggled with slow growth in Italy, where prices keep falling and customers keep switching. A big recent move was the sale of its fixed-line network — the physical cables and fiber — to a consortium backed by the US private equity firm KKR. That deal, completed in 2024, raised cash to cut debt and turned Telecom Italia into more of a services company that rents network access rather than owning the pipes. Italy's government took a stake in the network business, since the infrastructure is considered strategically important.
So today Telecom Italia is a leaner company: it still sells phone and internet service, still owns TIM Brasil, and still carries a lot of debt. It makes money from monthly subscriptions and usage fees, and its biggest challenge is squeezing profit out of a crowded, regulated home market while leaning on Brazil for growth.
Saved answer · last researched 12 Nov 2026