Keynote 4 highlights

Margherita Della Valle, Vodafone CEO

The role of telcos: As telcos, our first job is to connect everyone wherever they are. Together, we connect 300 million customers across Europe and invest over 20 billion annually in all areas of connectivity, from 5G to subsea cables to satellites. We also employ thousands of security experts to ensure safe connections. We have more security specialists across our companies than you can find in the headquarters of NATO.
European 5G: In what is now a global race, it’s fair to say Europe is not winning. A recent study showed that in Europe, 5G standalone is available to customers only 2% of the time. We are falling behind not just the US or China, but also an increasing number of low and middle-income countries.
European innovation: I think we need to work on two fronts. Number one, we need to flex our innovation muscle. And number two, we need to be able to scale that innovation with the right environment for investments. We still lead on innovation. Only a month ago, we made the world's first call between two normal mobile phones from an area without mobile coverage, through satellites. We have spearheaded the development of Open RAN from Europe. We have just launched an API alliance to open APIs to foster even more innovation.
Investment: The question is not whether we are innovating, but where our innovations will be scaled. That's where we need a different investment environment.

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Christel Heydemann, Orange CEO

AI innovation: We have to realize that the AI race is really just starting. If we look at the investments behind LLMs, today 75% of the investments are made in the US, with a big chunk of the rest in China. Europe is only doing a small part, but AI won't be just about LLMs. Why is AI going to be different? Because AI innovation will happen mostly at the edge. We are just scratching the surface. We haven't yet seen the mass of investment and innovation that will come from that. There's a lot of open-source innovation, and we embrace open source in our industry. The barrier to entry for AI will be a lot lower than it has been historically in the cloud or consumer web environment.
What sits between cloud and edge? A lot will happen at the edge, in the hands of consumers and in the heads of companies. And guess what? What sits between the cloud and the edge? Us. We will be the secure platform that combines the best of both worlds. AI ‘only in the cloud’ will not work due to the amount of energy and traffic it would require. AI ‘only at the edge’ may not work for some use cases. We believe the world will be a mix of AI at the edge, as frugal as possible. This is where we play a very important role.
Collaboration for AI: The technology will not come from us. But collaboration within our industry is something we do very well. We will work with the best technology and enable that ecosystem as we integrate AI into our networks.
AI and 5G: AI will be bringing you the killer app of 5G, because 5G slicing and all the capabilities that 5G embeds have not really been used. AI will probably be the real test case of a true 5G application, using all the capacities and capabilities that 5G has in our network.
Investment: More investment creates capacity, scale, innovation, and cheaper prices. This creates a virtuous circle. We need to change the market structure where more investment is seen as bad. We help the ecosystem by working with small companies, startups, European companies, and tech giants. We don't want to build borders around Europe, but we need a European ecosystem that benefits from more investment.

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Tim Höttges, Deutsche Telekom, CEO

US v Europe’s fragmented market: The US ecosystem is the winning ecosystem in every regard. After the merger and consolidation into three players for the whole American market, we see the benefits. After three years, we have 98% coverage of 5G, and prices went down by 12%. I've been attending MWC for 25 years, and it feels like Groundhog Day, repeating the same story. We should copy what the Americans are doing. Even China and India have three operators and are prospering, but Europe continues as always.
Investment v over-regulation: We need a reform of competition policies to allow consolidation of activities. We should build a European single market. If we cannot increase consumer prices or charge over-the-top players, we need efficiencies from the scale we create. Globally, bigger companies benefit consumers through investments. We must reduce regulatory burdens. Deutsche Telekom serves 270 regulators, including media, cybersecurity, privacy, and telecommunications regulation at local and national levels. Europe needs an initiative to cut down bureaucracy and administration, which hinders our industry's potential. We need to remove uncertainties from the investment environment. For example, are we allowed to do slicing in your market? Is it a violation of net neutrality? We need clarity to enable services and IoT. Red tape stifles innovation in one of the most promising technologies for the future.
OTT players: A lot of the traffic is coming into our networks from over-the-top players. They get the data transferred back to them, creating value for them. I have no problem with that, but they're using our pipes, which increase in capacity by 30 to 50% every year. Who's paying the bill? Us. They should contribute a little to the investment needs of our industry.

Learn more about Tim Höttges