Telecom Italia naturally highlighted the positives in its second quarter results, which do not yet show the impact of aggressive new entrant Iliad into the market, while confirming that asset sales are on the cards.

Rival Iliad signed one million customers in the 50 days following its debut in Italy. Following its launch in France a few years back, the country’s incumbent operators struggled in the face of greatly enhanced competition in the market.

Telecom Italia said its board has “examined the financial implications that could derive from the company’s participation to the 5G auction”, and has started an evaluation of the strategic operations related to subsidaries. It has confirmed the Persidera sale should continue, and Bloomberg reported that submarine unit Sparkle could also be on the blocks.

In its domestic mobile business, Telecom Italia’s revenue increased 1.6 per cent year on year to €1.3 billion, with a better operating performance more than offsetting “competitive and regulatory challenges”. The company ended the period with 31.6 million connections (including M2M), of which 19.6 million were defined has “human” (up 0.5 per cent) and 10.4 million were LTE subscribers (up 3.2 per cent).

Its domestic fixed business benefitted from “further advances in ultra broadband coverage”, which now reaches 80 per cent of households, simpler and more flexible new offers, and “an increasingly convergent customer offer”. But revenue of €2.6 billion was down 2.4 per cent year-on-year, with pressure on its traditional business partially countered by growth in “innovative” services.

More than 40 per cent of its fixed broadband consumer customers also have TIM mobile subscriptions.

Revenue in Brazil of €968 million was down from €1.1 billion. On an organic basis (taking into account foreign exchange movements), the figure increased by 5.8 per cent.

On a group level, the company reported a profit for the quarter of €338 million, down from €396 million, on revenue of €4.7 billion, down from €5 billion. It noted issues in the quarter including operational delays related to labour agreements (-€19.5 million), roam like home (-€12.7 million), and changes related to a new billing model (-€7.6 million).

With regard to its DigiTIM plan, it said that a “smart capex allocation process”, which directs and defines investment programmes based on profitability, had the biggest impact. It also said the number of customers served through digital channels is on the up, and several back-office customer care process have been digitised.

Its focus is now on speeding its decommissioning plans, extending use cases to big data and analytics, and insourcing.