Christel Heydemann

Announcing a fibre build is a promise to create a network; switching off copper is a commitment to move every remaining dependency away from an old one. France's closure therefore turns on more than cable and coverage: it reaches homes, business systems, alarms, emergency communications and public services, and it succeeds only when the parties responsible for each dependency act before the local deadline ([ARCEP's guide for local authorities](https://www.arcep.fr/mes-demarches-et-services/collectivites/fiches-pratiques/la-fermeture-du-reseau-cuivre-quels-enjeux-pour-la-connectivite-de-mon-territoire.html); [ARCEP's guide for professional users](https://www.arcep.fr/mes-demarches-et-services/entreprises/fiches-pratiques/que-va-changer-la-fermeture-du-reseau-cuivre-professionnels.html)).

Christel Heydemann runs Orange at the point where the telecom sector stops looking like a normal market and starts looking like public infrastructure with private shareholders: a former monopoly asked to raise European returns, fund fiber and 5G, grow in Africa, defend data-sovereignty claims, and absorb political pressure for consolidation without turning the company into a simple deal machine.

The useful signal is not that European telecom executives repeated a familiar request for consolidation. The shift is that the request is now being packaged as a competitiveness, investment and critical-infrastructure argument at the same moment Brussels is reviewing merger guidance and preparing a more harmonised digital-networks rulebook. Orange, Telefónica and Nokia put the operating pain in executive terms; Connect Europe and the GSMA put the same case into formal competition-policy language; the European Commission remains the gatekeeper that can translate the pressure into merger, spectrum and single-market rules.