Only the recorded version is authoritative
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear colleagues,
The digital transformation of our society has reached a critical turning point. On one hand, it is being adopted on a massive scale. Across all generations, at every single moment of our day, technology has woven itself into the very fabric of our lives. To the point where we can no longer imagine living without it. It drives competitiveness improvements, provides solutions that were once unthinkable to facilitate interactions and develop economic activities. And the recent generative AI services are only at the beginning of their promises for progress. Yet, on the other hand, this digital transformation sparks societal contestation and resistance to rapid changes.
Just last week, I was in Corsica meeting with local stakeholders to discuss the unique challenges of fiber access and mobile network coverage in this magnificent French region that is both very rural and mountainous. And someone told me about a very popular beach, Capo di Feno, in a zone with no mobile coverage. A white zone, as we say in French. On the ground, two groups are confronting each other. First, those who want to benefit from mobile services, in particular to be able to alert emergency services in case of accident. Second, those who do not want this, claiming the need to preserve this sanctuary of disconnection to rediscover the pastimes of their youth at the beach. What strikes me is that this second contestatory group implicitly acknowledges its own addiction to digital services and regrets no longer being able to disconnect.
This friction, this duality of perspectives is spreading across our entire society. This is why digital transformation is at a crossroad. It is really up to us to define which Tech we collectively want! It is up to us to define a digital future that is desirable for everyone.
Ultimately, it is not regulation that we should talk about first, but innovation, users' freedom of choice, competition, sovereignty, and environmental impact for us and for future generations. These are deeply European values that we must preserve and defend in our digital society, beyond even the societal or public health issues that were discussed in the previous roundtable.
So how do we do it?
First, we must align on a clear diagnosis. Digital infrastructures, both hardware or software, have become essential. Networks, large online platforms, cloud, and now artificial intelligence structure our entire lives, our entire economy. They organize social relations and condition our access to information.
Yet, today, they are designed and operated by a mere handful of players, almost none of whom are European. Did we truly choose them? Do we truly have a choice? Are we truly using the tech we want, for ourselves and for the generations to come?
In fact, it’s this observation that makes regulation not a peripheral question.
Allow me a brief linguistic precision. Where English has only one word, « regulation », in French we have two: « régulation » and « réglementation ». There is thus the framework, the boundaries (this is « réglementation », and, with it, the compliance issue), and there is the continuous action that allows dynamically orienting the market (this is economic « régulation »). This distinction is precious; it means that regulating does not consist only in setting limits, but rather in organizing, in an evolutionary way, an equilibrium within an economic sector for the benefit of all.
We must therefore overcome an opposition that has largely prospered recently: innovation on one side and regulation on the other. This is a misleading argument. Regulation is not the enemy of innovation, quite the contrary; often, it makes it possible, it sets its conditions, it guarantees its direction. And it grants rights. Regulation, in the French sense of the term, is an admirable tool for small Davids when they have to fight Goliath.
It is from this conviction that I would like to organize my argument today. I will first return to the essential lessons from telecom regulation. I will then address the new challenges brought by cloud and AI. Finally, I will argue that modern regulation is not only legitimate but necessary to innovate, protect, and preserve our freedoms. To ultimately build the tech we want, together.
The current landscape of the European telecom market is exceptional, and regulation has much to do with it.
The opening to competition, initiated from the 1990s, was not a spontaneous phenomenon. It was the result of political will, legal work, and regulators' capacity to intervene in the very architecture of the market. The effects were considerable.
First, regulation enabled the emergence of alternative players. This is the era of unbundling, establishing strong competition on prices and services for consumers' benefit.
Then, the 2010s decade marks a new stage. Regulation is not only there to open markets but it must accompany technological evolutions or societal expectations. Indeed, in France, we then speak not only of pro-competition regulation but also of pro-investment regulation, to support the deployment of fiber optic or greater mobile coverage of the territory, for example.
And it works! The recent BEREC report or the report by the European Commission's chief economist, Emanuele Tarantino, highlight both the good level of connectivity and attractive prices in Europe, and also the profitability of telecom operators on our continent.
Telecom networks are now integrated into a complete ecosystem of digital infrastructures that must be approached holistically. Networks, devices, major platforms, data centers dedicated to storage, computing power, AI services, and various cloud services: together they constitute the new digital infrastructure, the backbone of our economy and communications.
I would like to highlight three figures to characterize digital technologies in the lives of companies and our fellow citizens:
- Half of EU companies use cloud, and barely 20% of companies use AI in 2025
- Three players, digital giants otherwise, share 70% of the cloud market
- In the AI domain, concentration is also massive: ChatGPT is used by 63% of gen-AI users
In this context, the first risk is the same as historically observed in telecoms: market lock-in by dominant players. How did they get there? They leveraged their quasi-oligopolistic position on adjacent markets and carefully set up technical and commercial barriers making migrations to cloud services from other providers or interoperability between services from different providers complex, even impossible. They lock their clients into their universe, preventing healthy competition from developing. When the cost of exiting becomes prohibitive, real freedom of choice disappears.
Competitive issues are therefore at the very heart of issues arising in the development of digital services, and particularly AI services.
But as on the telecom market, we also face other, closely related challenges:
- Safeguarding freedom of innovation: how does an emerging startup have chances to access users if hyperscalers constitute both a bottleneck and potential competitors?
- Safeguarding freedom of communication, safeguarding /access to and sharing of/ online content. This principle is recalled in the Open Internet regulation. But how can we ensure that content remains visible and discoverable if AI agents replace search engines and become the new access portal to the internet, the gatekeepers of the Web?
- Preventing and limiting the environmental impacts of digital technologies: how can we guarantee that these technologies will be available for future generations, within our planet boundaries?
Beyond these risks we are also facing broader issues for public freedoms and democratic life: algorithmic opacity, amplification of biases, information bubbles, and foreign interference.
Regulating these infrastructures, therefore, is not only correcting an economic imbalance. It is also protecting our information space and, ultimately, defending our democratic processes. This is not a technical debate for specialists. It is a political debate on the very conditions required to exercise our freedoms.
Let’s see how telecom regulation lessons find new relevance to respond to those digital issues. What are our levers to act?
First, we must have an ambitious European industrial policy to enable the development of alternative offers, and we can together welcome the publication of the European Commission's « Tech Sovereignty package ».
Additionally, we must obviously facilitate market access for these alternative companies. The public procurement lever has been too long underestimated in Europe. I summarize in three words what could be done: Buy European Act.
But for the most part, a voluntary industrial policy will not be sufficient if new market entrants or alternative players slam into structurally locked markets. Digital markets must be truly competitive to allow new entrants to emerge. I hear those who argue that traditional ex post competition law is the only tool we need. Is this truly a realistic position? Competition law is indeed a very powerful tool, but procedures launched against hyperscalers these past years clearly show that its timelines are totally incompatible with digital market dynamics.
This is what justifies the European Union's action to create conditions for open digital markets, as it did 30 years ago in telecoms. We now have a unique toolbox, a set of texts that, taken together, give visibility to European public action:
- The European Electronic Communications Code, to guarantee open telecom markets and transition to very high-capacity networks, which should be preserved and modernized by the Digital Networks Act;
- The Digital Markets Act, to ensure fairness and contestability of digital markets;
- The Data Act, to unlock the potential of the Internet of Things and bring fluidity to the cloud market;
- The Data Governance Act, to foster a single data market in the Union.
This framework is ambitious; it translates a strong European political will for open digital markets, to the benefit of end-users. It provides different tools to regulators at European or national level to spark innovation through fair competition. We are still at the beginning of its application; its results are still emerging, and with voluntary and courageous implementation, I do not doubt it will bear fruit as telecom regulation did in its time.
However, this framework must adapt to integrate a critical goal that our ecosystem ignored for far too long: the environmental impacts of these digital technologies.
French law has commissioned Arcep to collect data from all digital players. The figures collected are worrying:
- The electricity consumption of data centers continues to surge, growing by 12% in 2024 alone, and thus despite significant progress in energy efficiency.
- Digital technologies already represent 3 to 4% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Without intervention, its carbon footprint could triple by 2050.
We recently published a report on gen-AI environmental impacts. Our observation is clear: today, these services, far from being immaterial, are massive energy gluttons, and their creators remain notoriously defensive and stingy when it comes to sharing actual impact data.
Europe must take on this issue, not only looking at digital hardware components, as it has done until now. We must collectively address the problem at its root: at the very design stage of these services.
Europe must promote eco-design of digital services as a major lever to act on the entire digital value chain. This eco-design aims to make our applications and services more sober through less addictive designs and by using more virtuous technologies.
Simultaneously, Europe must mobilize to make more virtuous alternative players emerge. Given our electrical connection capacities, this is without doubt even a necessity. This begins with transparency obligations for AI players regarding their environmental impacts. Publishing such metrics associated with model performance data would allow users to choose with full knowledge and steer the market toward better consideration of environmental impacts.
In conclusion, the legacy of telecoms regulation is a precious asset.
It proves that well-designed regulation can open markets, protect users, support innovation, and democratize access to life-changing technologies. And it is also such a framework that can allow alternative European solutions to grow and thrive. To put it plainly: I am convinced there can be no European technological sovereignty without fair competition in the digital word and thus without ambitious digital regulation.
Regulation means refusing to let the digital future be shaped by a select few on behalf of everyone else. Regulation means looking after the internet, so it remains fertile ground for open innovation, so it remains a common good for the next forty years and well beyond.
To achieve this objective, we must create the conditions for a collective, rigorous and open European debate. And then, we must be bold!
Thank to Philippe Dufraigne and thank to Cullen for this 40-year commitment to creating these spaces.