Leading executives from major European telecoms firms have called on the European Council to use policy to "support investment and innovation by the EU telecoms sector."
A letter addressed to Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, called on the body to "remove regulatory barriers to more investment in digital infrastructure. It cited the recently announced Digital Single Market Strategy as a positive step in this direction.
They called for policy-makers to ensure that the rules in the Telecom Single Market regulation "do not harm innovation and investment". They also want the European Council to "reduce the regulatory burdens on the sector by applying existing rules in a way to improve the conditions for investment in high-speed networks".
The perennial thorn in the side of operators, internet players, is evident in their request for the Council to "initiate a fast-track set of targeted regulatory reforms in the field of access regulation, spectrum management and asymmetries between traditional e-communication providers and internet players."
Signatories included the CEOs of operators from Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Orange, Portugal Telecom, Proximus, Swisscom, Telefonica, Telekom Austria Group, Telecom Italia, Telenor and TeliaSonera.
"We believe that both the European Institutions and the European industry share an underlying common objective: to give Europe the best growth opportunities, by supporting European citizens and businesses with smart services and powerful digital infrastructures," the letter says. "The Digital Single Market Strategy represents an opportunity that we should embrace together."
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