AOrange Spain CEO dds comments, background, title changes
MADRID, December 16 (Reuters) – Britain’s Vodafone VOD.L and Orange of France ORAN.PA want to play a role in any consolidation of Spain’s highly competitive telecommunications sector, the local chief executives of the two companies said on Thursday.
Local Vodafone CEO Colman Deegan said weaker competition would help operators build financial mass to deploy 5G technology.
“At Vodafone we want to play an active role in the process of telecommunications consolidation in Spain,” Deegan said in an op-ed published Thursday by the newspaper Expansion.
He said the current state of the market has reduced profitability and left providers without the financial capacity to pay for the infrastructure needed to develop 5G technology.
Vodafone, with competitors such as Telefonica TEF.MC and Orange ORA.FR, pressured the European Commission to relax antitrust rules that promote competitionarguing that overcrowding in markets such as Spain is hampering investment.
Deegan’s position was echoed by Orange Spain CEO Jean-Francois Fallacher, who complained that the three main telecommunications providers investing in the Spanish market were suffering.
“We’re very much in favor of market consolidation and that’s the right way to go. If there are any opportunities, we’ll be looking at them very carefully,” he told reporters during a briefing. Thursday event.
In a sign of pressure on the sector, three of Spain’s main operators have announced major job cuts this year, including Vodafone, Orange and, most recently, Telefonica, which laid off more than 3,000 of its top executives last month. .
(Reporting by Inti Landauro and Clara-Laeila Laudette; editing by Jason Neely and Bernadette Baum)
((Inti.Landauro@thomsonreuters.com;))
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