ECTA, the European lobby group representing telecoms challengers, has elected Gijs Phoelich as chairman and Martin Witt as vice-chairman, its board announced today.
ECTA, the European lobby group representing telecoms challengers, has elected Gijs Phoelich as chairman and Martin Witt as vice-chairman, its board announced today.
Phoelich is general counsel and company secretary of Dutch B2B fibre provider Eurofiber, while Martin Witt is CEO of United Internet-owned web hosting company 1&1 and president of VATM, an association of German communications businesses competing with incumbent Deutsche Telekom.
“We collectively need to seize the opportunity to create a vibrantly competitive digital single market that delivers first and foremost to end-users,” stated Phoelich. “The beauty of vibrant competition is that it is a win-win for all: the entire sector, investors as well as end-users benefit from an effectively competitive market.”
Highlighting the “risk of re-monopolisation by former telecoms monopolies”, Witt said: “We need European regulation to ensure effective competition in broadband in order to out-compete the economic slowdown. As bottlenecks still persist in the last mile of the fixed broadband network, strong and consistent regulation is needed to inject competition and guarantee choice, innovation and affordability for end-users. Regulation also plays a very important role enabling challenger operators to invest in next generation broadband networks.”
ECTA’s 2016 board will also include Meltem Anayaroglu, chief legal officer of Turkish ISP Turknet Iletisim Hizmetleri; Antonello Conte, board member at Italian ISP association AIIP; Emmanuel Forest, vice president of French conglomerate Bouygues Group; Ilse van der Haar, group head of regulatory affairs at Swedish challenger Tele2; Massimo La Rovere, head of regulatory, antitrust and EU affairs at Vimpelcom-owned Wind Telecomunicazioni; Jacek Niewglowski, chief strategy officer at Polish mobile operator Play; Tom Ruhan, adviser at Polish ISP Netia; Tiziana Talevi, director regulatory affairs at Italian fixed-line player Fastweb; Antonis Tzortzakakis, and chief fixed telephony officer and head of new business at Greece’s Wind Hellas.