“If our hands unleashed, we will score goals”

The top managers of Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange and Deutsche Telekom have joined forces in the MWC 2025 With a clear message: or Europe allows the consolidation of the European sector or telecos will die slowly against American and Asian giants. A cry of help that intensifies last year’s tone and raises the debate from the business to geopolitical.

According to its unanimous message, Europe is trapped in a contradiction that is gradually suffocating its telecommunications sector. While regulators applaud the multitude of operators as a sign of healthy markets, financial figures tell something very different: a fragmented, weakened and unable sector to compete on a global scale.

The new president of Telefónica, Marc Murtra, It had already been direct about it in the inaugural session of the Mobile World Congress 2025: “It is time for large European telecommunications companies to consolidate and grow to create technological capacity,” he said a few hours before. And during the CEOs panel of the sector, it was even more graphic: “We operated in a fragmented market, it’s like playing football with a hand tied to the back. If we unleash our hands, we will score a few goals.”

From the regret to strategic warning

It is not a new theme, but has reached a critical point. The combined stock value of all European telecos has been joining while that of the Americans, such as AT&T, have been growing for years. Meanwhile, giants such as Microsoft, Apple or Alphabet – which use telecommunications networks as highways for their services – exceed them alone the billion dollars of valuation. Long

The change in tone is evident to the MWC 2024, when the CEOs of these same telecos also demanded regulatory changes, but With a more focused approach to asking for contributions to Big Tech. This year the speech has hardening and reoriented towards the existential need for consolidation for survivaltransmitting more urgency and appealing directly to European technological sovereignty.

The Vodafone CEO, Margherita Della Valle, said it without windows: “Europe needs a new pact, which passes through a European regulatory framework.” And he added that “the time has come to move from Marmota to the European Digital Renaissance,” in allusion to repeated regulatory change requests that make year after year without results.

The European regulatory trap

European rules have created A perfect trap: They prioritize the immediate benefit for the consumer (low prices) sacrificing the future viability of the sector and its ability to invest. This vision, anchored in ideas of the 90s about competition, ignores that the world has completely changed.

Murtra, in his first public act as executive president of Telefónica, has been devastating in his diagnosis: “We must be aware that the excessive fragmentation of European TMT, excess regulation and insufficient profitability of the sector have weighed Europe, which has been technologically lagging behind.”

Tim Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, was the most explicit when putting numbers to the disadvantage: “In the US, the average income per customer is at 42 euros per mobile and 58 euros for the fiber, while in Europe 15 euros are entered for the mobile and 13 euros for the fiber.”

And he added a rather revealing fact about the bureaucratization of the sector: “I have told how many regulators served as Deutsche Telekom. Do you know how many? 270 regulators. We have media regulation, cybersecurity, privacy, telecommunications … at the local level and European level.”

In the United States, consolidation has left three major national operators that compete with each other, but with enough size to spend massively in infrastructure. In Europe, with 34 main and 351 virtual operators, no company reaches the size necessary to compete globally. Each European country has 3 or 4 average operators, but the problem is another: each operator is usually strong only in some markets.

The result is a European industry with tight margins, little investment capacity and a constant drop in its value. Deutsche Telekom has only been able to grow thanks to his American T-Mobile subsidiary. “Today we make 65% of our income in the US,” Höttges revealed, admitting that his company’s solution has been precisely “to fold the bet” in the American market.

Consolidation: inevitable but blocked

The consolidation of the sector is mathematically inevitable. Technology markets tend naturally towards structures with few actors due to economies of scale. Resisting this only delays the inevitable while weakens everyone.

However, European regulators remain firm: in the last five years They have blocked or imposed very hard conditions to almost all important fuses proposals. The operation between O2 and Three in the United Kingdom It was rejectedthe TPG and Vodafone fusion In Australia it took years to approve, and here in Spain we saw how The Orange-Másmobo union only crystallized after concessions that risked their profitability.

Della Valle highlighted the British case as an example of what should be: “In the United Kingdom, Vodafone has just launched a massive investment plan to build one of the best networks in the world. 11,000 million invested. Why could we do this? Because we had managed to scale through a fusion.”

This resistance comes from European institutional cultureto. The commission has built its reputation as a consumer defender, maintaining seemingly competitive markets, mainly measured by the number of companies competing. Changing this would mean that the policies of the last two decades have been counterproductive.

The price of doing nothing

The effects are already noticed. Investment in new networks per inhabitant in Europe is much lower than in the United States. European 5G coverage (81%) It is delayed with respect to the American and China (More than 95%).

Christel Heydemann, CEO of Orange, has stressed that “today our investors punish us when we invest more. What we want are investments that we know that they will boost scale, and the scale brings a smaller cost for jigwhich means lower prices for consumers and ability to invest in the ecosystem. “

American companies such as Spacex (with Starlink) and Amazon (with Project Kuiper) They lead satellite connectivity, while Europe has no relevant competitor in that field. China advances rapidly in 6g Through Huawei, while European telecos can barely finance the complete deployment of 5G.

This imbalance has consequences: whoever controls the connectivity infrastructure of the future will have an advantage in the development of advanced services, from autonomous cars to smart cities. European digital sovereignty, so mentioned in political speeches, is undermined by the structural weakness of their telecos.

As Murtra has warned: “Europe’s position in the world will continue to diminish and will not have the capacity to decide his future autonomously.” An affirmation that Change the tone of the debate from the purely business towards the geopoliticalconnecting with Brussels concerns about strategic autonomy.

The debate on the future of the sector

He Draghi report On European competitiveness, published in early 2024, he already pointed out that “Europe needs to facilitate the consolidation of the telecommunications sector to allow operators with continental scale.” This vision coincides with what the four CEOs have defended in the MWC 2025.

The proposal defended by telecos is double:

1. Allow national consolidation to three operators per country (as in the US, China and India).
2. Facilitate cross -border mergers to create larger European operators.

Murtra has pointed out during the event that “this step can reinforce European strategic autonomy, unlock productivity and improve people’s lives.”

But as the manager recalled, “the future we have to write among all. We have advanced governments, we have a rule of law, we have great professionals, so we have all the conditions to become an even more advanced market … but we have to change our way of doing things.”

To close, Murtra launched a message of hope with urgent dyes: “It is not too late for Europe. I think that in life and business the calamities are inevitable, but the decline does not.”

Now it remains to be seen how Brussels will react to this unanimous approach to the sector. The new competition commissioner, Teresa Ribera, declared a few months ago that the rules “will evolve” to adapt to the new reality, but for now the concrete signs of change have been scarce.

Meanwhile, the debate continues between those who see consolidation as necessary for competitiveness and those who fear that it may affect prices for consumers, a tension that will continue to mark the future of telecommunications in Europe.

In Xataka | Telecos counteratacan: Telefónica’s plan to convert their networks into platforms against large technological ones

Outstanding image | Telefónica