Telecom Italia detailed partnerships with banking group Santander and Google Cloud alongside its Q3 results, which showed a year-on-year dip in revenue but increase in profit.

The Google Cloud agreement will allow Telecom Italia to expand its enterprise offer to include new services based on public, private and hybrid cloud infrastructure. It is part of an aim to boost its role in the country’s cloud and edge computing market.

To support its drive, the operator said it would train or recruit more than 800 specialist engineers in the sector and make significant investments in upgraded data centre infrastructure.

Its deal with Santander Consumer Finance involves forming a joint venture to offer loans for the purchase of devices, with plans to extend into insurance and related products. Telecom Italia will be the minority partner.

In a statement, Telecom Italia CEO Luigi Gubitosi said the move to offer consumer financing through the JV rather than making device outlays itself would “free up capital and reduce credit risk, at the same time supporting our sales and broadening TIM’s revenue base towards new profitability opportunities”.

Revenue drop
During Q3, the operator booked a 6 per cent year-on-year drop in revenue to €4.4 billion, though it made a net profit of €301 million compared with a €1.4 billion loss in the same period of 2018, when the figure had been severely impacted by a €2 billion writedown of its domestic business.

The company said it was ahead of debt reduction targets despite what it described as a “complex competitive background”. Its debt fell by €419 million in the quarter and stood at €24.3 billion by the end of September.