Tim Hottges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, spoke at the Mobile Conference, the world’s largest mobile expo, held in Barcelona on March 3, 2025.
Lluis Gene | AFP | Getty Images
Barcelona – Europe needs its own version Elon MuskDeutsche Telecom CEO Timhöttges said on Monday that his plea for the region to call for a traditional tape festival for the telecom industry.
During a panel event at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Höttges said Europe lags behind key technological innovations such as the United States and China, such as artificial intelligence and next-generation 5G networks.
Hotger told the audience that he would speak with Vodafone’s Margherita Della Valle, Orange’s Christel Heydemann and Telecom’s Marc Murtra.
He added: “We need an initiative to reduce this bureaucracy and the government here because there are thousands of people sitting there and managing our industry.”
The Trump administration has only announced plans to launch Doge last year. The initiative, led by billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk, is tasked with cutting costs under federal administration.
The Governor is not actually a government agency, and his leader Musk is not an elected official. Since its inception, Doge has been hoping to cut spending on federal government agencies. Cut work in the defense, education and energy sectors.
Hotz said he has counted all regulators handled by Deutsche Telekom — including regulators for media, cybersecurity and privacy — with a total of about 270.
He added that unlike other European telecom companies, Deutsche Telekom was able to acquire most of its revenue from the U.S. through its majority stake in T-Mobile, a U.S. wireless network.
Cry again to merge
Since telecom companies have often done iterations in previous MWCs, Höttges called on Europe to lower barriers to market integration in the industry.
“There is no reason every market has to operate with three or four operators,” he said. “We should build a single European market.”
Despite this, analysts have not viewed industry mergers as the industry’s “silver bullet”. Florian Gröne, PwC’s global telecommunications leader, said that despite EU regulations causing “split” in the region, he was not sure he agreed that “you need cross-border integration and everything will be fine”.
“The vertically integrated telecommunications model has its purpose, but driving results from a corporate perspective and a regulatory, more social perspective is not the right lens,” Gröne told CNBC last week.
Höttges added that Europe should seriously consider charging US tech giants, for example Amazon,,,,, Microsoft and Netflix The cost of using a mobile carrier network is an initiative Have proposed several times in the past.
“This is a free service we offer because there is no interconnection. And I think even they should make some contributions, which leads to good investment demand in the industry,” Höttges said.
