Telecom Italia (TIM) has agreed to sell its subsea cable unit Sparkle to a consortium led by the Italian treasury for €700 million ($792m).

Italy's Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) along with Retelit, a company controlled by the Asterion fund, have finally reached an agreement months after making a non-binding offer.

TIM said it expects the deal to be finalized in the last quarter of this year, once antitrust and Golden Power authorizations are completed.

The carrier's board members approved the deal back in February.

The government had a previously undisclosed offer for the unit rejected in February. TIM reportedly wanted up to €750m ($848m) at the time.

Sparkle operates more than 600,000km (372,822 miles) of cables that connect countries across Europe and the Americas. Italy is seeking to bring this network under state ownership as part of a plan from Giorgia Meloni’s government to take control of more strategic assets.

TIM has been selling off various parts of its business in recent months. In January, the Italian government approved TIM's planned sale of its fixed line network to KKR, worth €22 billion ($24.9bn). The operator agreed to sell its landline grid network to KKR last November.