Like Spain with high speed rail, Italy is hoping that investment in broadband infrastructure can help the country climb out of the economic doldrums in the longer term. In the short term though, it looks likely that its grand plan for broadband everywhere could have a negative economic impact because of its knock on effect on incumbent Telco Telecom Italia. It looks like the government and especially prime minister Matteo Renzi have decided to sacrifice the Telco to the cause of cost effective broadband development exploiting the existing electricity distribution infrastructure. The government has calculated that this will reduce the cost of fiber deployment by around 35% by avoiding the need to build new ducting. But by providing an effectively…