The increasing harmonization of telecoms regulation and policy making across the European Union has had a deep, if only gradually evident, impact on the region’s competitive landscape, especially as more countries have joined (though the UK has left). EU-level decisions concerning mergers and acquisitions, roaming fees, security issues, spectrum bands and rules, and even Open RAN ecosystems, have helped investment flow into telecoms networks, and achieved a more consistent (though hardly perfect) regulatory framework that encourages roaming and economies of scale. On the downside, however, operators complain of reduced freedom of commercial action, over-regulation compared to hyperscalers, and slow decision making. And despite the improved unity that has slowly developed over the past two decades, the large multinational European operators…