Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hottges speaks throughout Cellular World Congress, the world’s largest cellular truthful, in Barcelona on March 3, 2025.
Lluis Gene | AFP | Getty photos
Barcelona-Europe wants his personal model of Elon Musk’s so-called division of presidency effectivity, mentioned Tim Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, Monday when he made a passionate plea for the area to chop the paperwork on the telecommunications trade.
Europe is lagging behind as colleagues such because the US and China in terms of vital technological improvements similar to synthetic intelligence and 5G networks of the subsequent era, mentioned Höttges throughout a panel occasion on the Cellular World Congress occasion in Barcelona.
“What Europe wants is a doge,” Höttges advised the viewers, along with Vodafone’s Margherita della Valle, Orange’s Christel Heydemann and Telefonica’s Marc Murtra.
“We’d like an initiative to cut back this paperwork and this administration right here, as a result of there are tens of hundreds of individuals sitting there and administer our industries,” he added.
The Trump administration solely introduced plans final yr to launch Doge. The initiative, led by billionaire Tesla -Baas Elon Musk, was given the duty of decreasing the prices of the federal authorities administration.
Doge is definitely not a authorities company – and her chief Musk just isn’t a selected officer. Since its basis, Doge has regarded to cut back the expenditure at federal authorities companies, making monumental job losses in departments for protection, schooling and vitality.
Höttges mentioned that he has counted all Deutsche Telekom supervisors – together with watchdogs for media, cyber safety and privateness – and that whole quantity got here to round 270.
He added that Deutsche Telekom, not like different European telco’s, can discover nearly all of its US earnings by the bulk stake within the US wi-fi community T-Cellular.
Renewed name for consolidation
As telecom firms have usually executed in earlier iterations of MWC, Höttges has made a renewed name for Europe to cut back boundaries for market consolidation in trade.
“There is no such thing as a purpose that each market has to work with three or 4 operators,” he mentioned. “We now have to construct a European inner market.”
But analysts don’t see the consolidation of the trade as a “silver bullet” for the sector. PWC’s worldwide telecommunications -head Florian Gröne mentioned that though the EU laws has led to “fragmentation” within the area, he’s not certain that he agrees with “mantra within the trade that you just want cross -thrower consolidation and all the things will likely be positive.”
“A vertically built-in Telco mannequin has its purpose, however it isn’t the appropriate lens to generate the outcomes each from an enterprise perspective and a regulatory, extra social perspective,” Gröne advised CNBC on a name previous to MWC final week.
Höttges added that Europe ought to critically contemplate counting American tech giants similar to like Amazon” Microsoft And Netflix A reimbursement for using the networks of cellular carriers, an initiative that has been proposed a number of occasions previously.
“It’s a free service that we provide, as a result of there are not any connections. And I feel even they should contribute a bit to result in the funding wants of our trade,” mentioned Höttges.
