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The subject wanting this is "Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni" (Authority for Communications Guarantees) which is the regulator and competition authority for the communication industries in Italy.

They say:

> To compensate the TLC companies, the TLC companies could be allowed to collect money from the customers wallet (phone credit). [...] Or maybe (those messaging apps) should just avoid the Italian market.

This is just primitive and retrograde, I can't believe I am reading this.

All they are doing is making the interest of TLC companies which in Italy have a long and repeating history of charging the users with unjustified costs.

In Italy, not so long ago, there was just one national (country ran) TLC company (SIP) which at the time had almost prohibitive costs for connecting to the Internet and using it in a continuative way.

After the market became private, competitors arose and prices started to fall but they never got as cheap as the most developed countries because one of companies (the once country ran one called SIP then renamed Telecom) is still the only one responsible for the country-wide cabling and all the new competitors have to pay for the renting of the cabling, so they all together form a pole of interest that keep leveraging on the long-instilled mentality in the consumers that they had to be subject to higher fees.

This sucks and it's just a "modern" attempt of re-balancing those TLC companies profits on this same principle again after the coming of messaging apps that had for once brought back a sane competition in the market.

It is interesting that you (as a customer) pay for the privilege of having a number assigned and for your data plan. They seem to forget this.
Exactly, you are paying already for the data plan, but because this is getting them less revenue compared to what they'd get if you didn't have a data plan, they want to balance out by charging for the use of messaging apps. Crazy BS!