There is a sector that today more than ever in Europe seems to need to change its rules and shed its skin to achieve a new rationality: the telephony sector, which aims at a consolidation based on the reduction of the number of protagonists, which today is around one hundred and fifty (in twenty-seven countries), reflecting a great and harmful fragmentation.
Above all, they intervene to counteract this process the authorities and a decidedly complex regulatory framework. Despite everything, something has recently started to move, with the search for commercial agreements that has led to the authorization of some joint ventures and to the advancement of network sharing, the sharing of networks.
However, it remains the possibility of transnational agreements or mergers between ex-monopolist operators is far off on the horizon, all of which are sailing in bad waters, weighed down by enormous debts, among which the thirty billion Telecom Italia debt stands out.
There is a positive aspect, in a sector that seems to be proceeding on sight, and it is the continuous expansion of communication technologies, and their progressive and growing massification, indifferent to the crisis. To make the most of the potential of this growth, however, there would be a need of heavy investment in broadband infrastructure, investments quantifiable at around 300 billion euros and which, perhaps, the protagonists of European telephony, due to convoluted regulations and too high prices, will not be able to sustain.
