In the days before announcing his departure as chairman and chief executive of Telefonica, César Alierta boarded a private plane for Rome to confer with the Pope about his plan, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Vodafone and Telefonica have used a technology conference in Spain to call for the EU to focus less on new rules for phone companies and more on Facebook and Google to reduce their dominance.

GOOGLE, Apple and Facebook must help pay for the billions of dollars of network investments needed for their bandwidth-hogging services, phone operators say.

SHARES in O2 surged 25% yesterday after Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica swooped to take over the mobile operator for €26 billion.

Chief executives from 10 major multi-national communications companies will have a summit next week in Dundalk with telecommunications ministers from throughout the EU and the accession states.