What will Telecom Italias Internet strategy be?
Italy is a little different from the U.S. and some other countries when it comes to the Internet because personal-computer use is still relatively low here. So our strategy is going to be different from other U.S. and European companies. The important thing in Italy will be to expand services to clients, beginning with improving and decreasing the costs of telephone traffic. Then we start with developing services for schools, homes, and businesses. The Italian market still doesn’t understand the Internet, so it’s going to be our job to teach it. Q: Your takeover of Telecom Italia is making economic history in Italy and Europe. Do you expect other operations of this kind? A: You need to consider that Italy was not used to seeing takeovers like this. Italian business has been dominated by a lot of small and medium-sized companies managed and controlled by families or by the entrepreneurs who started the companies. Then you have several big family-controlled industrial groups, like Fiat,
