European telecoms: A sorry tale of mismanagement and lost opportunity

clock • 2 min read

Being at the heart of today's smartphone and data usage explosion, it is hard to see how an investment in a European incumbent telecoms company could possibly have gone wrong in the past decade or so.

Following years of exponential growth, there are now more mobile connected devices in the world than there are human beings - 2014 mobile data traffic is estimated to be 30x higher than the total internet data traffic for the year 2000. The trend is set to continue, with 2019 data usage forecast to be 10x higher than the 2014 total. Surely the gatekeepers of the networks that enable this meteoric growth must have rewarded shareholders many times over? The answer in most cases is a resounding 'no'. Liontrust's Clark: Three 'quad-plays' transforming the telecoms industry We have witne...

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