What Europe needs is a version of the U.S. government's controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hottges said on Monday, along with other top telecoms officers at a major mobile and tech gathering in Barcelona.
"What Europe needs is a DOGE," he said at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. "We need an initiative to cut down this bureaucracy and this administration here because there are tens of thousands of people sitting there and administrating our industries."
DOGE, led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, is an initiative to slash federal government spending and transform the American bureaucracy. The unofficial team has become highly controversial for firing large numbers of federal workers and accessing sensitive data.
Hottges said he counted how many regulators, including watchdogs, Deutsche Telekom deals with in Europe, and the number came to around 270.
He called for more consolidation within the industry and the ability for operators to charge higher consumer prices as well as tolls for tech giants like Amazon or Netflix to use the infrastructure set up by telecom companies.
Hottges’ comments came during a panel discussion alongside other European telecom chiefs: Telefonica’s Marc Murtra, Vodafone’s Margherita Della Valle and Orange’s Christel Heydemann.
They echoed Hottges’ criticisms, noting that Europe’s technology sector is lagging compared to competitors in the U.S., the Middle East and Asia.
"We must be aware that excessive European ... regulation, fragmentation and insufficient industry returns have weighed Europe down into falling behind in technology," said Murtra.
Della Valle added that Europe is also struggling with 5G technology.
"In what has now become a global race, it’s fair to say Europe is not winning," she said, adding that Europe is even falling behind in "an increasing number of small- and middle-income countries."
The executives, however, also highlighted innovation within Europe and high levels of talent.
Orange’s Heydemann suggested that there is still a significant opportunity for European operators in terms of the intersection between AI and edge computing.
