Italy's communications regulator has put a concrete number on how long its mobile carriers can keep operating: December 31, 2037. On July 29, 2026, AGCOM's Council opened the last in a series of public consultations on renewing mobile spectrum usage rights across the 800, 900, 1500, 1800, 2100, 2600 and 3400-3600 MHz bands, plus 28 GHz fixed wireless, all of which are set to expire at the end of 2029. The proposal, which builds on the "Renewal Option" framework AGCOM first floated in Delibera 154/25/CONS in June 2025, would hand operators an eight-year extension at no cost — but only in exchange for binding 5G Standalone build-out commitments. Stakeholders have until October 5, 2026 to submit observations, according to AGCOM's press release.
The bargain: free spectrum for guaranteed coverage
The mechanics are straightforward. Instead of running a fresh auction — which would extract billions in licensing fees but also load that cost onto consumer bills and capex budgets — AGCOM proposes a non-oneroso (free-of-charge) rollover of existing rights. In return, operators must deploy 5G Standalone networks guaranteeing at least 150 Mbit/s downlink and 30 Mbit/s uplink, with latency capped at 15 milliseconds, to 95% of the population under peak-traffic conditions. Coverage obligations extend beyond city centers to rural and mountain areas, national parks, tourist locations, and transport corridors including roads, railways and tunnels, verified through three PNRR-style milestone checkpoints. This is the right instrument for the job: an auction-free renewal tied to enforceable, measurable coverage targets is a more efficient way to close Italy's rural connectivity gaps than either an expensive spectrum sale or an unconditional handout.
Iliad's objection: built the network, still gets the virtual-operator label
The friction is over a separate clause. To "promote competition," AGCOM's framework requires the three largest holders of spectrum — TIM, Fastweb+Vodafone, and WindTre — to keep providing wholesale access to "the fourth mobile network operator" and to service providers, including MVNOs, for the full renewal period. Iliad, which entered the Italian market in 2018 and has since built out its own radio access network, objects to being lumped into that access-dependent category at all. Sources close to the company told Il Sole 24 Ore that AGCOM's orientation "treats Iliad like a virtual operator" despite roughly €5 billion invested in some 20,000 proprietary antenna sites, and that the approach "sets a precedent that penalises anyone wishing to make new investments in infrastructure" — a characterization Iliad argues conflicts with both Italian and EU telecoms law. Iliad had separately pushed for a rebalancing of spectrum holdings among the four national operators; that request was not incorporated into the draft framework, according to ANSA.
Steelmanning AGCOM
AGCOM's position isn't frivolous. Wholesale access mandates on the three largest spectrum holders exist to keep MVNOs and smaller players from being frozen out of the market for the next decade — a legitimate competition concern in a country with only four facilities-based mobile networks. And Iliad, whatever its infrastructure spend, is still smaller than the other three by subscriber share and spectrum allocation; treating it as needing continued access guarantees isn't obviously unreasonable as a transitional safeguard. Regulators are also right to worry that renewing spectrum for free, with no strings on access, would let incumbents entrench their position for another eight years.
Why the distinction still matters
But there's a difference between requiring incumbents to sell wholesale capacity to MVNOs that own no towers, and folding a facilities-based challenger that has spent €5 billion building its own network into the same bucket. The signal that sends to the market is exactly the one Iliad is complaining about: spend a decade and billions of euros building physical infrastructure, and your regulatory status may not look meaningfully different from a reseller that never laid a cable. That is a bad incentive to embed into a framework meant to run through 2037 — a period in which Italy, like the rest of the EU, will need private capital for 5G Standalone and eventual 6G build-out, not a chilling effect on the next infrastructure investor weighing whether to build or lease. AGCOM has nine weeks, until October 5, to fix this in the text rather than the courts. The proportionate move is to keep the free renewal and the coverage obligations — both defensible — while narrowing the wholesale-access clause so it targets genuine virtual operators, not the one company in the room that just spent five billion euros proving it isn't one.