Connect Europe Videos

What are the regulatory ingredients to foster digital innovation in Europe? How does the future of telcos look like? #ThinkDigital had, once again, the privilege to interview one of the CEOs of ETNO Members. This time, we were in the company of Mr. Atanas Dobrev, CEO of VIVACOM.

As social and political complexity increases across the globe, who is still committed to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Digital leaders from the European Parliament and industry stakeholders share their knowledge on how to achieve the SDGs through the use of digital solutions.

As Gerry McQuade has just been appointed CEO of new business unit BT Enterprise in order to bring together and lead the new organisation, we are releasing this week’s #ThinkDigital video interview in which McQuade emphasizes his vision with respect to the telco of tomorrow, the EU regulatory approach and more. "I think the key message from me is one of optimism. I think now is the right time to decide how we take a leading position in a digital economy. I think we are at a crossroads, though.

Citizens will very rapidly see a set of rules protecting their interests, which are clear and common to all the types of communication services that they increasingly use interchangeably, they will see rules which are adapted to new ways of mixing products and services like content and communications.

It is clear, first of all, that we have a lot of work to do on the Digital Single Market legislative files. And, along with our trio partners, Bulgaria and Austria, we want to complete negotiations on all of the DSM files something that the heads of states and governments have promised for 2018. And we will definitely make that target.

I think that 5G is a better wireless and it is to be defined but also not only is it a higher-performance capability, I think more ubiquitous will be part of the story, but also tailoring connectivity to particular requirements. So for some of the Internet-of-Things applications, they are quite low speed, hundreds of Kbps. For a fixed-wireless link to a mobile-base station, you might want 10 Gbps. It will not wait until 2022: it is happening now. Operators are investing in networks now, in the sense of getting them ready for 5G by making them denser, and so on.

What we need is to ensure that we have allocation and assignment of spectrum that is taking place in a timely manner and which is taking place in a transparent and really foreseeable manner. Concretely, we believe that the peer review proposal is not going to solve all our problems, but it is a step in the right direction, where it, hopefully, will lead to more transparency. Do you want to be kept up to date with the latest telecoms news and agenda? If so, sign up now for the weekly digital newsletter.

Europe is at the moment in this situation when it is trying to come to terms with many confluents of events. We have a telecoms sector in transformation and the policy makers involved are trying to come to terms with this, using the code, maybe, as an opportunity to create a new vision for Europe, because the future is digital, and how do you create a rulebook for that?

We need connectivity. In order to have a good deployment of these things in the future, we need a very low latency. So we do count on the ETNO members that they provide us with a very ubiquitous network, not only in the urban areas, as the 5G – Gigabit plan is promoting, but also along the highways and along the remote areas. And so, we need a seamless, I would say cross-border coverage, and that is something we would have to work on, jointly, with our both industries.

Let’s be clear, this is one of the biggest choices Europe has to invest in the future, to come up after 10 years of regulation for the telecom with a new framework that embraces the possibility of new technologies and also make our consumers more powerful, more active with the new technology. And this is also for the industry. So this is absolutely crucial.

The GDPR already, is well known to people from all kinds of companies. They come and say that they start to implement and really, for them, now, it is very inspiring. They are not complaining anymore that it is too complicated, that it is too difficult. In opposite, they find new ways for how to provide better services, what to do to have innovative technologies. So I suppose that always the clear rules really are for people who are creative and innovative; the better environment, the indefinite rule.