Randall Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T, has described Europe as a “huge opportunity for somebody” and “incredibly exciting”.
Stephenson, who has become a regular visitor to Europe, was speaking at the FT ETNO Summit 2013 in Brussels.
When asked…
Randall Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T, has described Europe as a “huge opportunity for somebody” and “incredibly exciting”.
Stephenson, who has become a regular visitor to Europe, was speaking at the FT ETNO Summit 2013 in Brussels.
When asked about what he thought of the European market, Stephenson said: “I continue to be fascinated and surprised by how slow it’s moving in Europe, but I think of that as a huge opportunity for somebody.”
AT&T has been linked with European M&A since the start of the year as it looks for growth opportunities outside the US market, which is starting to slow.
“I think Europe has the potential to be incredibly exciting, and I believe that because of what we’ve just come through in the United States – this mobile internet revolution.”
Stephenson said that the continent had been left behind by other countries.
“It’s fascinating to me that six years ago Europe would have been considered the first in the world in terms of mobile technology, in terms of investment and deployment,” he said.
“And really a short six years later Europe has gone from first to among the last in the developed world in terms of deploying these technologies.”
Stephenson said that over the last five years the company that had invested most in the United States across sectors was AT&T, and that Verizon Communications was second.
The CEO said that this was being driven by US spectrum policy, and emphasised how crucial the rules around frequencies were to attracting investment.
In the US operators feel like owners of spectrum, rather than renters, because the licences are longer compared to Europe, and sometimes indefinite.
He said that licensing agreements that mimic ownership will always drive the greatest investment and innovation and preached the benefits of longer term licences.
He also stressed that operators need large maps of spectrum: “You have to have very broad ubiquitous spectrum footprints, or maps, if you want low-cost wireless infrastructure, because scaling wireless infrastructure effectively requires standardisation.
“And if you’re operating in multiple small geographies, at multiple spectrum bands that require multiple network configurations and multiple handset chipsets … it will completely change the economics for deploying the latest generation technologies.”
