Network regulation now affects far more than retail telecom prices. It shapes Europe’s ability to host data-intensive industries, secure critical communications, and reduce dependence on non-EU technology ecosystems. If the regulatory framework continues to prioritise static market structure over investment incentives and scale, public authorities may face slower digital modernisation, weaker resilience, and higher long-term strategic costs.
Key Risk
Failing to align telecom regulation with broader industrial objectives could lead to fragmented markets, reduced investment, and diminished EU competitiveness.
Strategic Opportunity
Brussels can stimulate investment in 5G and fiber infrastructure by streamlining spectrum allocation processes and approving strategic mergers that enhance market capacity. This would build resilience in digital infrastructure and position EU telecoms as innovators in AI-driven services.
Historical Context
The EU’s three aviation liberalisation packages (1987–1993) offer a closer parallel. Regulators prioritised market structure and route-level competition, assuming a large number of carriers would serve both consumers and network investment. The result was 15 years of fragmentation and chronic underinvestment, followed by consolidation into the Lufthansa, IAG, and Air France-KLM groups anyway – under greater financial distress than a managed process would have produced. Brussels eventually drew the lesson that optimising for carrier count had not optimised for network resilience or capacity. Telecoms and aviation share the same structural logic: capital-intensive, network-effect-driven, and prone to producing the very concentration that static regulation tries to prevent.
What to Watch
- The European Parliament’s ITRE committee is working through the Digital Networks Act (DNA), which would replace the existing telecoms framework and consolidate spectrum, merger, and network rules into a single directly applicable regulation. Rapporteur MEP Michał Kobosko (Renew, Poland) is drafting the committee report; ITRE’s position on the DNA’s investment-friendly spectrum provisions – including proposed unlimited-duration rights and a use-it-or-share-it principle – will be a leading indicator of whether Parliament preserves the Commission’s pro-investment framing.
- Telefónica’s planned rollout of 5G infrastructure in Spain, aimed for completion by Q4 2026, potentially impacting competition in mobile data services.
- The release of the 2026 EU Digital Economy and Society Index report in Q3 2026, which will assess member states’ performance in digital infrastructure and connectivity.
- The Council of the EU is reviewing the Digital Networks Act in parallel with Parliament. Council working parties have been active since May 2026, and the positions taken on spectrum rights duration and cross-border consolidation rules will determine whether the final text retains the Commission’s investment-first framing or reverts to the fragmentation-preserving approach of the outgoing framework.
Read more: Future networks will not be built on yesterday’s rules (sponsored) →
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