A wave of consolidation is taking place across Europe. In Britain, BT plans to take over EE while O2 is in the process of selling its network to Three. In France, Altice’s subsidiary, Numericable-SRF, is acquiring Bouygues, while in Norway, Telia plans to acquire Tele2. These consolidations are primarily as a result of the pressures that mobile operators are facing due to declining revenues and margins. Voice revenues have been declining much faster than data revenues have been rising, creating intensive pressure on mobile operators’ finances.
To put this into perspective, the Financial Times[1] reports that European mobile revenues decreased by 18% between 2008 and 2014, whilst the return on capital employed halved in the same period to around 10.9%
