Sector & service specialists

The connectivity ecosystem – comprising telecom services, network equipment, and content & applications in Europe is worth about €1 trillion, contributing almost 5% of the continent’s GDP and surpassing traditional industries like agriculture, fisheries, and forestry combined.

Connect Europe (formerly ETNO) has been the voice of Europe’s telecommunication network operators since 1992 and is the principal policy group for European electronic communications network operators. The European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) is the leading pan-European telecoms association promoting market liberalisation and competition in the European communications sector. The EU telecoms sector is one where there are many national champions but few pan-European leaders.

As a side note, the author once looked at the correlation between the size of the association secretariat and the size of the industry it represents and found that there were many other factors at play. Connect Europe members for example employ 1 million people throughout Europe, however, the secretariat only employs 11 people which is much smaller than other associations with industries of similar scale. Fragmentation of the European market and the presence of many national telecoms operators in Brussels probably explains this disparity. Hence, most opportunities for public affairs consultancies and law firms are with traditional telecoms operators, or newer entrants offering consumer broadband and triple-play and challenger mobile/wireless network operators and service providers.