Telefónica is 100 years old but it is now when you have to decide what you want to be older. Is facing its greatest existential dilemma

Few companies become hundred. Of those who achieve it, few have survived as many transformations as Telefónica.

Founded when the phone was a luxury, a civil war, world war, dictatorships, democracies, republics and monarchies, privatizations, technological bubbles and digital revolutions has lived. But He has never faced a crossroads as existential as the current: Define your identity for the next century.

He Mobile World Congress 2025 It has been the scenario where Marc Murtra, in his first months as president, has presented his vision for Teleco. A stand of almost a square kilometer encapsulated this Identity search.

The Valencian artisanal spheres that decorated the space – a beautiful wink four months after the Dana tragedy – represented something halfway between tradition and modernity. A Perfect metaphor of a company trapped between two worlds: The conventional teleco that is seeing how its margins are eroded, and the technology company in which it aspires to become.

An operator in a hostile world

The European context does not help. While the United States has three main operators for 335 million people, Europe has 34 for 450 million. This fragmentation, praised by regulators as a low price guarantor, has created an ecosystem where no operator has the critical mass to compete globally.

Murtra was not subtle in Barcelona with Your Opening Speech: “It is time for large European telecommunications companies to consolidate and grow to create technological capacity.” A warning: “Europe’s position in the world will continue to decide and will not have the capacity to decide its future autonomously.” What until recently was a business debate has now climbed to geopolitical matter.

The new president draws the battle with a sports metaphor: “We operate in a fragmented market, it’s like playing football with a hand tied behind our backs. If we unleash our hands, we will mark a few goals.” A GRADE OF Aid Shared by the CEOs of Vodafone, Orange and Deutsche Telekom, who joined the choir In Barcelona with an unusual voice.

Pallete left a perfect paradox on the table: He reduced the debt in half (from 53,000 million to less than 29,000) while the stock value collapsed 57%. The equation is clear: Financial sanitation is no longer enough to seduce markets. The investment seeks growth stories, not survival.

And that is where the technological jacket feels better than that of Teleco. And for her they go.

The MWC as a declaration of intentions

The demos that Telefónica presented in Barcelona are the anticipation of their future bets. It is no longer limited to talking about connectivity, but goes into more complex territories: Autonomous drones integrated with Open Gateway APIS, Security in the face of quantum computing challengesand its digital operations center for cybersecurity.

It is striking that the Teleco did not simply show its 5G network, but the applications that can be built on it. Your demo drones He showed cases of health, environmental and logistics use. An effort to be in the value chain beyond the “tube” of data is appreciated. Beyond the dreaded Commoditization.

The presentation of its technology Quantum-Safe Networks He anticipates threats that have not even arrived yet, but they will do it when quantum computing is more present than future. The announcement of an excellence center in this field, although without detailing investment or template Xataka On this matter, it shows its intention to become a strategic security provider.

Enrique Blanco, outgoing Ctio after four decades in the company, has indicated that they have been working in this field for a decade, conducting limited tests in areas such as Madrid or Vizcaya.

But perhaps the most important bet is Open Gateway. Chema Alonso, visible face of digital transformation (although An uncertain future), has presented Agreements with Tiktok, Cabify, AWS, Google Cloud and the Community of Madrid. The goal is convert their networks, so far mere highways, on platforms that generate income. Telefónica wants to monetize its privileged position as an identity validity and position itself as a technological intermediary between citizens and services.

However, Under these modernity signs, the structure of a company born to another world persists. Its corporate culture, molded for decades as a national monopoly, collides with the agility that innovation requires. The More than 100,000 employees that still maintains the group contrast with lighter operators. Not to mention the great technological ones.

The impossible referents

When telecos have tried to reinvent themselves, the results have been lime and sand.

• AT&T opted to become a media company acquiring Warnerjust to end selling it years later.
• Verizon bought Yahoo and Aol, and then detach from both in half of what cost them.
• Deutsche Telekom, perhaps the greatest success case, has managed to better balance its transformation, but as its CEO Tim Höttges explained in Barcelona, ​​”today we make 65% of our income in the United States.”

Telefónica’s case is more complex. Its international expansion gave it global scale, but also dispersion (a few days ago He sold his Argentine subsidiary for 1,000 million). And its telephone division Tech points to diversification towards cybersecurity, Cloud and IoT, but still represents a small fraction of total income.

In the agora of their stand in Barcelona, ​​where more than one hundred managers have paraded tensing during the fair, Telefónica has sought to project a technological leader image. The problem is that the market continues to see it fundamentally as a teleco with aspirations technot as a true technological company. The transition is a long process.

The absent host paradox

The MWC has put another painful irony on the table: Spain organizes the largest technological fair in the world While your participation in the development of the global digital ecosystem Languidece. We are the hosts of a conversation in which we barely participate.

The central pavilions pust American innovation and China while Europe is content to organize the cocktail. In just fifteen years, The continent that gave life to Nokia, Ericsson and Alcatel has become mere consumer Premium. Nokia symbolizes this decline: from global mobile telephony to supplier B2B With a stand corporate fluorescent tones that camouflage its irrelevance for the final consumer.

It is not just hardware, there the battle against the Asian scale was lost in advance. The alarming thing is our absence in the segments where talent should be enough: software, digital platforms and AI. Precisely the territories where entry barriers are more permeable to ingenuity and less dependent on industrial muscle.

The most complicated transformation

The transformation that Telefónica needs goes far beyond new products or divisions. It requires a deep cultural change, from how it develops services to how it markets and maintains them. But above all, it requires solving a fundamental contradiction: how to transform into a technological company while managing the controlled decline of the traditional telecommunications business?

Murtra movements anticipate their strategy. Emilio Gayo’s appointment as CEO is not accidental. Its results in Telefónica España – Revenue, Ebitda and Client For the first time since 2018– They endorse him as an effective manager. The new telephone is committed to A balance between Gayo’s operational execution and Murtra’s strategic visionwith his European consolidation speech.

This challenge is especially difficult for A historical company with perceived responsibilities towards the State (now a shareholder through the SEPI), unions, pensioners and small investors They depend on their dividend. The shadow of the Matildes It is long. The recent entry of the Saudi STC, which controls 9.9% of the company, adds more complexity to this balance.

Telefónica’s existential dilemma will define its next century, and can even end up being the definitive study of whether traditional companies can really reinvent themselves in the digital era. In Barcelona we have seen only the first chapter of that story, but Murtra has already made clear the message: “It is not too late for Europe. I think in life and business the calamities are inevitable, but the decline does not.”

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