ABSTRACT
Until the mid-1980s, all European countries had an incumbent monopolist as the national provider of telecoms services. The situation in Italy was particularly complex. Telecom Italia started out as a company majority owned by Stet, which was itself majority owned by the state holding company IRI. In 1995, Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) was split off from its parent and partially sold off, with Telecom Italia retaining a 60 per cent stake. The plan was to privatize the entire IRI holding in Stet during that year, but the government had failed to set up an independent national regulatory authority by that point in time so the plan was postponed.
