Last week the Mobile World Congress was held and we talked more about the news and trends than about the fundamental movements in the sector, which greatly affect the competitiveness of our country. Let's remember where we came from to better understand where we are going: in 1989, the Franco-German research group Groupe Special Mobile, GSM, defined the protocols that make it possible for mobile phone companies to be compatible with each other. The launch of the GSM system meant investments and redoing infrastructure, but it paid off because it opened up new businesses such as roaming. The first roaming agreement between two operators, one Finnish and one English, was signed in 1992 and little by little everyone was added. In 1995, the operators that used the GSM standard came together in an association, the GSMA, which organizes the Mobile World Congress. The standard has been evolving and each new version has been called with a number: 3G, 4G, 5G, and although each one has offered more and better features, what has really been sought is always to increase the income of the operators.
For example, in Spain the public's true access to the internet arrived at the turn of the century and until well into the 2000s the majority did not begin to have e-mail at home. This is when 3G is deployed with a clear proposal: the phone is also used to receive and answer emails. Blackberrys arrive, but they also start charging us for data packages and make a lot of money. The states saw that all this would be a big business and decided that only three or four companies would have access to the radio spectrum where 3G operates, and which ones would be decided through an auction. The winners would pay the State hundreds, billions of euros and they would make up for it with the business they would do.
The Internet continues to evolve and in 2005 YouTube is founded and video arrives, and in 2009 the iPhone is presented, a resoundingly multimedia device. In order to be able to support audiovisual formats on the mobile phone, 4G is launched and the operators are once again deploying infrastructure and paying billion-dollar auctions to the states for the privilege of having access, but things go wrong and they are astonished to see the appearance of large streaming platforms such as Netflix or Spotify, which bill billions. It is already a classic to hear the presidents of the telephone companies complaining bitterly that without their infrastructures the business of Google, Facebook, Amazon or Netflix would not be possible, but that none of these companies pay them. With 4G the operators have stuck their fingers: they have invested a lot in infrastructure and paying the licenses to the states but the business has been done by others. And with 5G things have not gone better.
European policies have made the sector more complicated, which has caused an exaggerated fragmentation of this area. There are two major mobile phone carriers in China, and three in the United States. Large markets managed by very few companies that can recoup investments. In contrast, there are eighty major telephone companies in Europe and none of them are very large. Telefónica has such a weak value that with only 2,000 million euros, Saudi Arabia can aspire to 10% of the shareholding and become its main shareholder. And if we zoom in we see that in Spain alone there are more than six hundred telephone operators. It's ridiculous. Small and very small companies that will never reach a reasonable volume to take on the investments that our digital future needs.
Everything will continue to evolve and we will need to catch up. It will be necessary to deploy 6G, 7G or whatever the coming innovations are called, but the operators will no longer be willing to pay billions to the State and, moreover, assume the cost of these infrastructures. The numbers do not add up and the next auction may be the other way around: the State will have to pay if it wants someone to deploy a network in the territory. Perhaps this is why Spain is moving and announcing its entry into Telefónica's shareholding: the country's competitiveness cannot depend only on the commercial logic of an operator. In Catalonia we discuss a lot the management and expansion of the airport, but we do not discuss who will manage and expand our digital infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Cellnex shareholders are no longer from here and no one has said anything about it.
