Eurobites: EU's Vestager remains unconvinced by clamor for consolidation

"No evidence suggests that more concentrated national markets lead to better outcomes." That's the view of Margrethe Vestager, the EU's competition chief, expressed at a conference in Brussels today. As Bloomberg reports, it's a conclusion that could be interpreted as the blowing of a loud raspberry in the direction of major European telcos, who have been repeatedly trying to make the case for consolidation within the bloc, claiming that policymakers' excessive regulation and a misguided approach to spectrum distribution, among other things, are leaving them facing an uphill struggle to long-term profitability.

In other EU matters, unnamed sources have told Reuters that the bloc's antitrust regulators have decided that Microsoft's $13 billion investment in OpenAI does not count as an acquisition, so will not face a formal European investigation. According to Reuters, regulators had earlier hinted that the deal may be subject to full merger scrutiny, with all that entails in terms of concessions and "remedies" on the part of the big fish swallowing the smaller fish.

A strong performance in Lithuania helped Tele2 increase underlying first-quarter EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) by 2% year-over-year, to 2.6 billion Swedish kronor (US$239 million). End-user service revenue grew 4%, to SEK5.3 billion ($487 million). Commenting on the results, CEO Kjell Johnsen said that Tele2 remains "cautiously optimistic" that consumer confidence in its operations will gradually improve as inflation and interest rates fall.

ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, has been given 24 hours to respond to European Commission questions about a stripped-down version of the platform – launched in France and Spain this week – that pays its users for short-form video views and engagement. As the BBC reports, Commissioner Thierry Breton has compared TikTok Lite to "light" cigarettes and wondered out loud whether it was similarly "addictive and toxic."

BT, Orange Business, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and Colt have all made it into Gartner's "Magic Quadrant" for global WAN services. And that, apparently, is a good thing. However, not everything was magical: BT is below average compared to its peers in sales momentum and customer satisfaction; Orange Business's overall strategy is described as Europe-centric; Deutsche Telekom's customer portal is in its infancy and less sophisticated than its rivals'; and Colt has limited network coverage in Latin America.

UK mobile operator Three UK has become a "coalition partner" of Internet Matters, a charity focused on protecting children from online harm. It joins a list of 18 supporting telcos and technology companies, BT, Sky, TalkTalk and EE among them.