Marc Murtra has been clear and direct in his first major public appearance as executive president of Telefónica. Just a month after taking the reins of the Spanish operator and a few days since its first presentation of financial results, the Catalan engineer has taken advantage of the opening session of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to launch a resounding message to the European authorities: it is time for the old continent to change its rules to allow the consolidation of the telecommunications sector.
This inaugural speech is not any intervention. All the eyes of the telecommunications sector are put in Murtra, an executive who arrives in Telefónica with the explicit mandate of transforming it into a critical moment for the industry and for herself.
His choice of message in this first MWC as president is A strategic statement of intentions marked by the company’s new road map and shows their priorities for European regulators. We are facing the first public movement of a new chess game.
The idea comes from very far.
Telefónica stand at the MWC 2025. Image: WorldOfSoftware.
“It is time for the large European telecommunications companies to consolidate and grow to create technological capacity,” Murtra said in a speech that marks a clearly different tone from his predecessor, José María Álvarez-Pallete.
Where the previous president cultivated a media profile focused on digital transformation and collaboration, Murtra has opted for structural forcefulness: Europe needs giants in telecommunications capable of competing with American and Asian giants.
The message is not accidental. Murtra arrives at the presidency with the support of the three major shareholders of Telefónica (SEPI, Criteriacaixa and STC) and with the mission of repositioning the teleco after years of stock market stagnation. Its diagnosis is devastating: “We must be aware that the excessive fragmentation of European TMT, excess regulation and insufficient profitability of the sector have weighed to Europe, which has been technologically lagging behind.”
This position reflects a strategic reading of the global scenario. Murtra draws a technological power map dominated by “titanic technology companies” that work “as dominant actors in almost monopolistic markets” and that “have their headquarters in the United States and China.” Its conclusion is clear: Europe is being left out for its own regulatory restrictions.
Murtra’s speech connects with the current context of the sector. European operators carry years claiming a regulatory change that allows national mergers to gain efficiency and investment capacity. Its argument is that each European country has too many operators competing, which erodes margins and limits the ability to invest in advanced networks. Meanwhile, giants like AT&T O Verizon in the US, or the big Chinese operators, enjoy much more advantageous positions in their domestic markets.
Mutra during his speech. Image: WorldOfSoftware.
“Europe’s position in the world will continue to diminish and will not have the capacity to decide its future autonomously,” Murtra warned, raising the debate From the merely business to the geopolitical. The tone seeks to connect with the concerns that Brussels now have about European technological sovereignty.
Murtra’s presence in the MWC goes far beyond this message. Telefónica has deployed an imposing 960 square meters where it shows its advances in quantum computing, digital safety and drones connected by 5G. Under the motto “Leading Change, Inspiring Progress“, The operator is intending to exhibit a vision that combines toe technology with a humanistic approach, focused on social impact.
However, It is the message about consolidation that marks the pattern of the new course of Telefónica. The discreet engineer has shown that his strategy does not go through shyness, but by forcefulness. Murtra will not only administer the inherited, but it seems willing to push a structural transformation of the sector. Another issue is how far it is capable of arriving.
Time will say if this commitment to concentration finds an answer in Brussels, where The European Commission has accustomed us to suspicion compared to mergers that reduce the number of operators in national markets. But Murtra has made it clear that the battle for the future of European telecommunications has just begun. And in that game, Telefónica wants to play a leading role.
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