Phone firms call on EU to allow mergers to cut costs

European regulators need to allow phone businesses within a country to merge to avoid them being choked by network costs, a top industry group said yesterday.

The call comes before rulings on whether to approve such deals in Germany and Ireland.

Efforts by European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes to establish a single telecommunications market across the region don’t address the problem that the roll-out of infrastructure consumes an ever-growing share of operators’ revenue, said Tom Phillips, chief regulatory officer at GSMA, which represents 800 mobile operators globally.