The President of Cable Europe has called on regulators to reduce the burden of regulation to enable cable to continue the road to consolidation.
Manuel Kohnstamm, who is also the Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer of Liberty Global, said Europe still had some 150 telecoms and fibre operations compared to the two found in China or United States.
Turning his attention to the regulators and policymakers listening in the Square conference centre, Brussels, Kohnstamm reminded them it took a year to approve the smallest market transactions. “We need to quickly fast track this constellation in order to grow the European markets”.
He said there was a school of thought that an oligopoly had emerged amid a presumption of guilt and market failure. As hundreds of operators were consolidating, Kohnstamm said there was the opportunity for regulators to crack down on incumbent telcos.
Earlier, Cable Europe executive chairman Matthias Kurth opened this year’s Cable Congress with the declaration that cable will be the front-runner for the Gigabit society.
“Cable revenues grew by 4.6pc last year, and that’s a big figure if you factor in that the economy is not growing by these numbers,” he said.
Connectivity was no longer a topic of just the telco industry, but also the car industry.
