Bad connections; Telecom Italia.(Italy's phone giant Telecom Italia S.p.A. must do better)

Economist (US), The, August, 2004

The troubles of Italy's phone giant

"IN WHICH other developed country would you wait over two months for a telephone?" asks John Andrew, chairman of Eidos Partners, which last autumn had to begin its life as a boutique investment bank in Italy without a telephone line--and this despite being just 50m across Piazza Affari from the executive suites of Marco Tronchetti Provera, the boss of Telecom Italia.

The Italian phone giant insists that business users wait only seven days on average for a line. Mr Tronchetti Provera can point more plausibly to some other successes since he took command in July 2001. He has cut the workforce from 116,000 at the end of 2001 to 93,200 at the end of last year. And he has built a reputation for choosing executives wisely...

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