Italian wholesale fixed network provider Fibercop will cut 1,800 jobs this year.

The company struck an agreement with the country's unions that will see staff take early retirement during 2026. The cuts equate to around 10 percent of the company's total workforce.

Fibercop was formerly known as NetCo prior to being acquired from Telecom Italia (TIM) by a KKR-led consortium in 2024 for €22 billion ($26bn).

The planned layoffs were announced by Italian union Slc Cgil, which explained that the union, along with other unions Fistel Cisl, and Uil Uilcom, reached an agreement with Fibercop to initiate the early retirement program.

As part of the agreement, Slc stated that workers impacted will "meet the requirements for early retirement, i.e., seniority, by November 2031."

According to the union, the exit pool has "been identified primarily among areas not committed to achieving the company's strategic objectives under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), particularly regarding deliveries to be made by the first half of 2026."

The layoffs will be carried out in two phases this year, with the first on June 30, 2026, and the second on November 30, 2026. The agreement means that those impacted by the 1,800 voluntary redundancies have up to five years (60 months) of retirement access.

"The inclusion of the safeguard clause is particularly important," said the SLC CGIL national union in a translated statement. "Given that the government continues to tighten pension regulations, we cannot risk workers being sidelined during the implementation of the agreement.

"While positively assessing the use of the early retirement scheme to manage the effects of the ongoing labor transformation in the telecommunications sector, SLC expresses 'deep regret for the lack of attention shown by the government towards a strategic sector for the country.' This lack of attention translates into the failure to fund the expansion contract, the lack of tools for re-professionalization, and the government's unwillingness to support and fund the sector's bilateral fund."

Fibercop was set up in 2021 by TIM, KKR, and Fastweb, as a way to manage TIM's ‘last mile’ fiber network.

This network is the passive fiber-to-the-home infrastructure that links homes to the cabinet at the end of the street. The company's network spans 27 million kilometers of fiber optic cable and more than 14 million active fiber lines. This is still significantly less than Fibercop's copper network, which covers more than 114.3 million kilometers.

Fibercop's FTTH (Fiber to the Home) network reaches about 40 percent of premises in the country.

The network also includes 10,500 exchanges and more than 160,000 street cabinets.