The Executive Chairman of Telefónica, Marc Murtra, defended today in Barcelona, during the first day of the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the need for the European Union (EU) to promote the consolidation of the telco sector to boost its strategic and technological sovereignty. “We need scale, we need pro- technology regulation and we need more speed,” he said during his participation in a panel entitled ‘What does strategic technological sovereignty mean for Europe?’, which was moderated by the Director General of GSMA, Vivek Badrinath, and in which the CEO of Deutsche Telekom, Tim Höttges, and the CEO of Eutelsat, Jean-François Fallacher, also participated.
Murtra stressed that Europe must progress in three ways to increase its strategic sovereignty. The first is the scale of the telco sector. “We need larger companies, with more resources, more risk capacity, better coverage and the ability to make deeper technological investments,” he said.
The second is regulation. “Regulation must establish priorities. I think we are in a period where we need to prioritise the creation of technology. Regulation must be pro-technology and enable investment and innovation”, he defended.
The third point is the need to act quickly. The chairman of Telefónica has called for regulation to be adapted to the current reality, in which changes are accelerating with the emergence of AI, generating products very quickly. “In this sector, we have witnessed technological changes compounded over 30 years. But I don’t think I’ve seen a more profound change than the last three months with AI. We’re seeing new AI models almost every month. The way of programming, testing programs and developing products has change completely in just three months,” he argued.
“If we want to be sovereign, we will need digital products,” he added. In this sense, he has called for the need for Europe to have cybersecurity products. “If we want strategic autonomy, we need our own cybersecurity capabilities,” he said.
The chairman of Telefónica has focused on the obligation to have hyperscalers to take advantage of the benefits that come with greater size. “Hyperscalers handle enormous amounts of information, and if we rely on third-party software and technology, that technology can potentially be used for other purposes,” he warned. A third block of need corresponds to the convenience of having AI products that are their own. “I don’t see how Europe can be sovereign without cybersecurity products, without hypercaler software management, without artificial intelligence capabilities and without access to the algorithms that shape how our children, our teenagers and our adults perceive the world,” he said.
For all this, Murtra has reinforced “the priority has to be investment in technology. That must come first,” he requested. From there, supporting mergers and acquisitions in the sector so that it can be consolidated, as gaining scale will benefit society as a whole. “Allow us to gain scale as part of a broader social contract, and in return, we will invest in technology. It will enable us to offer better services, deliver more value and strengthen our competitiveness,” he emphasized.
For more information: Telefónica at MWC 2026
