The public-private partnership in the Italian satellite telecommunication system design: SIRIO and Italsat (1969-1996); in Y. Cassis, G. De Luca, e M. Florio (a cura di), Infrastructure Finance in Europe. Insights into the History of Water, Transport, and Telecommunications; Oxford University Press, 2016.

In the last decades of the XX Century the expansion in telecommunications urged the development of a satellite network infrastructure. Satellite, as every network technology, presents public-good features other than high costs and technological risks. The case of the design of the Italian satellite telecommunication system consists in a peculiar case of Public Private Partnership. This paper compares the SIRIO and Italsat satellites in order to highlight the differences in the partnership between the public buyer and the firms involved in the two different projects. In the latter case, the partnership between private industry and public agency has had the form of an agreement to purchase a service with specific requirements at a specific time in the future, creating incentives for innovation and on-time and on budget implementation.