Vodafone CEO says Europe's digital infrastructure needs scale to drive investment

By Paul Sandle

LONDON, June 16 (Reuters) - The chief executive of Vodafone urged European governments to speed up regulatory changes that will enable mobile phone groups to consolidate their market positions and drive the investment needed to keep up with the United States and Asia.

"I think speed is always the challenge, and the faster the better," Margherita Della Valle told the Reuters Next summit in London on Tuesday, referring to an EU consultation on merger guidelines. 

Della Valle, at the helm of Vodafone for three years, said more investment was needed across Europe's digital infrastructure, to help economies grow, but also to ensure security and resilience at a time of geopolitical threat.

"If we want this, we need more investment, which needs scale," she said.

In France, telecoms groups Bouygues, Orange and Iliad-owned Free are facing a complex antitrust review of their planned $23.5 billion takeover of SFR, in what will be a test of regulators' willingness to support consolidation in the sector.

Della Valle has reshaped Vodafone to make the mobile phone giant one of the biggest in its markets, leading the merger of Vodafone with Three in Britain, to create the biggest player there, while exiting its Italian and Spanish businesses.

She said she expects the EU to follow Britain when it finalises new merger rules, allowing the number of network operators to reduce to three from four, in a change from a long-held red line to maintain four operators in big European markets.

"It's all about return on infrastructure, and if you can have, like we now have in the UK, one network which carries the traffic of 28 million customers, by definition your business case is a completely different one," she said.

View the live broadcast of the Reuters Next World Stage here and read full coverage here.

(Reporting by Paul Sandle, writing by Sarah Young; Editing by Hugh Lawson)