Miguel Pinto Luz says the communications sector was once ‘more dynamic’

The infrastructure minister said this Wednesday that the communications sector was once “noisier”, that it had “crushed profits”, and defended the need to find new ways to improve the rewards of those investing in the area.

Miguel Pinto Luz spoke at the closing of the 33rd APDC Congress, which took place this year under the theme “40 years of the future” in Lisbon.

“It was a busier sector than it is today, to put it mildly, it is a sector that today has low profitability, where the regulatory and competition architecture significantly limits action,” the government official continued.

“This sector has undergone successive disruptions with the emergence of new players. [operadores] in the market for new ways to use the infrastructure itself, it is a sector that requires successive cycles of intensive capital investment,” he admitted.

In order for “us to lead the next development cycles, we need to find new ways to strengthen the capital rewards that we currently offer to those who invest in this sector, let’s not hesitate,” he stressed.

During the State of the Communications Nation debate, Altice Portugal executive presidents Ana Figueiredo, NOS Miguel Almeida and Vodafone Portugal Luis Lopes addressed the sector’s lack of return on capital and the issue of consolidation.

The minister said Europe had a “culture of small and medium-sized companies”, adding that topics such as AI needed to be put on the European agenda, and admitted he was already working on how Europe could distribute tax collections.

Miguel Pinto Luz also argues that artificial intelligence and quantum computing are strategic areas, adding that it is necessary to “implement a new development model for Europe.”

The government official confirmed that it was necessary to “create wealth in order to distribute wealth”, also noting that Europe needed to have “large companies” otherwise the welfare state would not be able to be maintained.