(Telecompaper) Telecom Italia reported a 2.6 percent year-on-year fall in first-quarter revenues to EUR 5.05 billion, hurt by the ongoing economic downturn in Brazil, but a significant improvement on the 11.9 percent decline posted a year earlier. EBITDA dropped 7.7 percent to EUR 2.03 billion, and EBITDA margin dipped to 40.2 from 42.4 percent a year ago. Net profit declined to EUR 80 million from EUR 222 million in the year-earlier period, mainly due to the negative effects of the recent bond buyback programme, without which the company said its profit would have been over EUR 300 million. Adjusted net debt fell slightly to EUR 27.4 billion from the EUR 27.53 billion reported a year earlier. Telecom Italia welcomed the results as confirmation that the sales decline of recent years had been contained, above all in its domestic business that makes up around 70 percent of revenues. CEO Marco Patuano is betting on lucrative superfast fixed and mobile broadband services to bring Telecom Italia back to growth by 2017. The operator is about to sell a 40 percent stake in its tower business, Inwit, and has teamed up with Sky Italia on a convergent IPTV offering, to be called TIM Sky. Investments during the quarter came to EUR 964 million, up EUR 280 million on Q1 2014, helping the company to expand its fibre-optic network to over 140 cities (32 percent of the population) and bring 4G services to over 80 percent of the population.