(Telecompaper) Telecom Italia (TIM) announced that its directors approved the sale of a minority stake in its last-mile fixed network to US investment fund KKR Infrastructure during a board meeting in which they also backed a government plan to set up a single high-speed broadband network company with rival Open Fiber. The agreement with KKR will see the US firm take a 37.5 percent stake in TIM's last mile fibre and copper grid company FiberCop for EUR 1.8 billion, on the basis of an enterprise value of EUR 7.7 billion and an equity value of EUR 4.7 billion. That deal is expected to be launching pad for the government's plan to merge FiberCop with Open Fiber to create a single network operator