The EU wants to consolidate its telco operators to make continental challengers, to compete with the best and the brightest global tech firms, especially those in the US. There is now talk of Telecom Italia’s (TIM’s) remaining mobile network unit being acquired by private equity. This could be a starter pack for EU consolidation, where governments own parts of the wholesale provider, but if so, the outcome will not be pretty for Europe’s MNOs in their current format. After scything off its fixed-line assets, called NetCo, for up to €22 billion to US private equity firm KKR earlier this year, TIM is again in the spotlight for more M&A talks. This time, private equity firm CVC Capital Partners is reportedly…