Familiar calls for deregulation and consolidation to help spur investment alongside debates over fair share and the governance of AI set the tone for the first day of the event
Keynote 1: The Gateway to a New Future
The opening keynote of MWC25 saw balanced reflections on the challenges faced by the industry and the opportunities that may yet lie ahead, all discussed in front of a capacity crowd. Marc Murtra (CEO, Telefónica) – just weeks into his new role – raised the curtain on this year’s event, not taking long to bemoan the excessive regulation, fragmentation and poor returns that he considers have weighed heavily on the European telecoms sector and the region more broadly. Sunil Bharti Mittal (Founder and Chairman, Bharti Enterprises) was also quick to highlight similar persistent problems, including the high cost of spectrum and high levels of taxation levied against the industry, which reflect an apparent failure to recognise the broader value of investment in connectivity. Citing the 4% return on investment averaged across the industry, he quipped that telecoms investors might as well put their money in the bank and play golf instead. Vicky Brady (CEO and Managing Director, Telstra) used her remarks to suggest the industry also look inward at how it has not efficiently captured value through massive growth in demand, making a thinly veiled nod to the tech industry as one sector that has succeeded in monetising these changes.
Despite this familiar and at times bleak assessment of the state of the sector today, the session also offered more optimistic outlooks, albeit largely conditioned on action from industry, governments and regulators. In his last MWC as the GSMA’s Director General, Mats Granryd described the telecoms industry as brutal but also unique and beautiful as it continues to grow and innovate. Mittal similarly discussed the social value that connectivity contributes, which is celebrated widely, but he urged that bold action would be necessary for that story to carry on – including in the form of regulatory reform on spectrum management, in-market consolidation (also a key request from Murtra) and taxation. In addition, Mittal called on his operator peers to “share, share, share”, considering that duplicate infrastructure investment pointless and the locus of competition should be on brand and services. Brady and Benedicte Schilbred Fasmer (President and CEO, Telenor Group) suggested that industry must also embrace action in learning from past mistakes and pursuing new avenues for monetisation. Vivek Badrinath (incoming Director General, GSMA) joined Granryd to close the session and discussed his plans to continue to advocate for the industry on spectrum costs and investment barriers, but also to challenge operators to evolve by developing new business models and working with partners. That push for change was evident in his first year priorities, which included leveraging AI adoption (as it’s facilitated by improved connectivity) and prioritising collaboration with partners throughout the digital ecosystem, particularly satellite firms, to advance coverage aims.
Keynote 3: Balancing Innovation and Regulation: Global Perspectives on Telecom Policy
Amidst the ongoing battle between Europe and the US for tech leadership, the opportunity to see the EC and FCC take to the stage couldn’t be passed up. Despite their obvious differences both were unified in their call for the simplification of regulation and the award of more spectrum. Brendan Carr (Chairman, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) welcomed policymakers to the (fairly empty) room, noting that if you’re not a policymaker then you’re still welcome but also probably more interesting. Given his previous role as Commissioner of the FCC, he stated that his core regulatory principles from then are still the ‘north stars’ he’s following now. While before he called that deregulation, now he’s preferring to focus on the simplicity of the rule book. In an apparent dig at the European access model, he said this would look like simplifying rules that allow the building of new networks in new places, rather than encouraging the rental of old networks already in place.
For Carr, barriers (in the form of regulation) mean less investment. As an example, he explained how approving the Sprint/T-Mobile merger meant investment, speeds and coverage have all improved. With the repeal of the net neutrality framework he proclaimed that “the heavy handed regulation of the internet” in the US had now come to an end, and that under his leadership we will see “permissionless innovation”. Henna Virkkunen (Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, EC), also carried the message that regulatory simplification was her guiding objective. This, along with investment in networks, would be imperative for Europe’s competitiveness – “we must act decisively and rethink the regulatory framework and cut red tape.”
Both Carr and Virkkunen focused on spectrum policy. For Europe, the aim is greater coordination between Member States and “investment friendly licence conditions”. Virkkunen was keen to point out that Europe has already awarded 21GHz of spectrum for 5G but wants to go further. Carr’s focus is the upper portion of the C-band. He identified this band as new spectrum that can be used to power AI. Carr’s final warning was aimed squarely at the EC. He stressed that the Trump agenda is about encouraging free speech and the removal of censorship. In his view, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes excessive rules that curtail free speech, arguing that this should be a worry for European citizens, and is incompatible with the values of the US tech companies being captured by the regulation. His promise is that President Trump will speak up and defend the interests of US businesses.
Keynote 4: Driving Europe’s Digital Future
At MWC 2025’s fourth keynote panel, the CEOs of four of Europe’s largest operators drove home the message that there is a need for the regulatory burden to be lifted, for investment and innovation to be promoted and for consolidation to be encouraged. In his second keynote appearance of the day, Marc Murtra (CEO, Telefónica) again criticised overbearing EU regulation which he argued can “kill you” in too large a dose, echoing JD Vance’s (VP, US) speech at the Paris AI summit in February 2025. Murtra also stressed the need for consolidation and a move to larger scale, pan-European operators while continuing to question EU regulation, ridiculing the peculiarity of an industry having to ask to be permitted to invest.
Margherita Della Valle (CEO, Vodafone) touched on a number of the same points, explaining that the EU was at risk of becoming too digitally dependent on other states and that the region is no longer just falling behind the US and China, but also lower-income countries. Della Valle also praised the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority’s approval of the Vodafone-Three merger on the basis of increased investment for the sector. She pointed out that cloud providers are becoming dominant in some areas of connectivity, i.e. satellite and subsea cables. She envisaged a day when European operators will have to ask hyperscalers to carry some of their traffic, saying it doesn’t need to be this way, and it’s in the industry’s control to change that fate. Della Valle was not all negative though, praising the talent and potential for innovation in the EU as a means for growth in the telecoms sector and the wider digital economy. Tim Höttges (CEO, Deutsche Telekom) conducted a far more animated critique of existing regulations, exclaiming that the EU needs to mirror the US’ Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to tackle the regulatory burden. Höttges distinctly summed up the mood of the panel by calling for the EU to simply copy the approaches taken in the US, China and India of reducing the number of operators through consolidation. Each of the panellists agreed that the strengthening of the EU’s single market would be crucial to this consolidation and scale-up.
Lastly, while agreeing with her fellow panellists, Christel Heydemann (CEO, Orange) shifted her focus away from regulation and spoke more on the potential for the telecoms industry to lead AI integration. Heydemann was optimistic about how European investment could stretch much further than just large language models (LLMs) which have been the focus of US and Chinese investments so far and discussed how AI integration will be the first real test-case for 5G in the EU.
Is It Time for Big Tech to Pay Their Fair Share? The Case for Backing Telecom Networks
MWC25 demonstrated that the embers of the ‘fair share’ debate are still very much alight, with a session exploring whether big tech should contribute to telecoms network costs. While pitched as a question, the views of the panel were clear from the outset. Referencing a report published by his team just last week, Ben Wreschner (Chief Economist and Head of Public Affairs, Vodafone) argued that a “tragedy of the commons” exists in telecoms whereby operators’ networks are treated as an infinite resource by tech firms that lack incentives to invest sufficiently in their ongoing maintenance. Despite recognising a symbiotic relationship between telecoms and tech, Wreschner outlined three areas in which Vodafone considers change is necessary: i) establishing a framework for traffic optimisation; ii) reviewing net neutrality rules; and iii) enabling commercial negotiation for traffic services. Denis O'Brien (Chairman, Digicel) undoubtedly took the strongest stance in favour of fair share, stating that “some has to pay the pied piper for the music”. He welcomed the progress being made in the Caribbean and Latin America towards a potential fair share arrangement, which has been underpinned by collaboration between policymakers and operators such as Digical, América Móvil and Telefónica. But it was his comparison of past European empires’ exploitation of the Caribbean’s assets to big tech’s use of operators’ networks as the foundation for their hugely successful services that arguably raised the most eyebrows among the seemingly partisan crowd. Considering regulation more broadly, O’Brien stated that Europe needs reform “from top to bottom”, with regulators behaving like “fools” by driving spectrum fees and other costs for operators. Perhaps naturally, MEP Laura Ballarin Cereza was relatively more diplomatic in tone and message, acknowledging that fair share is a polarising issue and that there needs to be a consideration of all options, including a market-driven approach based on voluntary agreements – possibly with some sort of regulatory backstop in case those break down. Describing 2024 as a year of reflection (in light of the Letta and Draghi reports), she considered that 2025 should now be the year action, urging colleagues to consider how to take forward the recommendations from the two former Italian Prime Ministers while being mindful of the effects on consumers and the need to reduce fragmentation between EU Member States.
AI governance: Who sets the rules?
In a panel on governing AI, the tensions playing out globally in the regulatory debate over AI safety were on full display. Claudia Nemat (Member of the Board of Management, Deutsche Telekom) opened the conversation with an ambition to make the EU the “AI execution continent” through a human-centric approach to development and adoption. To achieve that vision, she issued a call to action to regulators, describing a need to limit bureaucratic requirements and further develop the single market. Francisco Jose Montalvo Abiol (CDO Director, Telefónica) echoed a concern with regulatory burden but added a degree of realism about that burden, suggesting that if firms really stopped innovating for fear of regulation down the line, they would never do business. Nia Castelly (Co-Founder and Head of Legal for Checks, Google) similarly offered that firms don’t need to wait for regulatory action or legislation to build principles-driven governance frameworks as they are actively developing systems, especially because regulation is not likely to ever catch up to the pace of innovation. Richard Benjamins (CEO and Founder, RAIGHT.ai) argued that there does not need to be a trade-off between responsible development and innovation, noting that it’s far cheaper to mitigate and prevent risks earlier in the development process than to correct issues after deployment. He held that it was not possible to deliver on the promises of responsible AI – both in preventing harm and in creating positive outcomes for consumers and more broadly – without strong governance mechanisms, clashing with Nemat’s point on rolling back administrative requirements.
Elsewhere around the conference on Day 1
In a conversation on investment fatigue in the rollout of standalone 5G (5G SA) networks, Michael Ackland (Chief Financial Officer, Telstra) echoed the earlier thoughts of his colleague Brady in suggesting that operators had created a false expectation among consumers that connectivity that supports more advanced technologies is a given. He suggested that the industry needs to be confident in resetting the relationship and charging appropriately for the improving quality of service that consumers are receiving through 5G SA. Kerry Small (Chief Operating Officer, BT) took a more level approach in suggesting that the path forward is to narrow, not broaden, focus on monetising services, urging operators to work backwards from the question of what problems consumers are trying to solve through connectivity.
