Brussels, Sept 28, 2025 (Lusa) - In an interview with Lusa, Meo's CEO stated that the consolidation of the sector at both the European and national levels will be inevitable and that Meo's voluntary exit program is not yet closed.

Ana Figueiredo also said that Meo aims to double its “non-telecoms” revenue over the next three years.

Asked about the consolidation of the sector, she believes that consolidation in Portugal "is inevitable and consolidation at European level is even more inevitable" because there are around 40 telecoms operators or groups for a population that is "slightly larger than the American population", which has three operators.

Portugal has around 10 million inhabitants and four operators. Spain "probably has five or six times more inhabitants" than Portugal, France, or Germany, "which has eight times more, we have the same four operators," she pointed out.

Therefore, "I think consolidation will be necessary, it will be inevitable" because in technology "scale is everything".

Ana Figueiredo gave the example of the world's big technology players, which are "global, not national".

"When they started investing, they always thought about the world and didn't just operate in one geography or one territory or even one continent," she continued.

In this global space, "we also have to be able to compete in an obviously global way, with capacity and muscle," she said.

Meo's CEO argues that Portugal has to think seriously that it is only through a strong industrial policy" that it can "also guarantee its digital sovereignty, which is so much talked about these days when there is the imminence of two blocs, in which it could be even more exposed to the international context.

Telecommunications is a "fundamental" sector, just as "it is so important for us to guarantee our energy sovereignty", he emphasises.

"That's why energy sovereignty and digital sovereignty are almost two revolutions that are happening at the same time," so it's "very important" to guarantee this from an economic and national point of view.

Regarding Meo's voluntary departure programme, Ana Figueiredo didn't give any figures because the process is still underway.

"This programme was created to be able to renew skills in our company" and "thinking about this generation that will probably leave the company, a generation that has made a significant contribution to the company, but that at the moment, due to the challenges we face, we also need to renew these skills, bring other skills to the company", said the CEO.

The programme "isn't completely closed yet, but it's also an opportunity and it's done in this logic of renewing our operational level and obviously the automation and investment we've made in recent years in the company," she adds.

Recently, "we've just done the onboarding of the company's new trainees" and "we're obviously going to continue recruiting key competences, reinforcing competences that we consider essential for Meo's future", for the present and the future.

On 11 September, 24 young people from the STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] areas began their internship and, on the same day, 50 former interns from the 2024/2025 edition joined the company.

"It's obvious that we're not replacing people with machines, we're renewing skills, skills that will be needed to take Meo to the next level," says the CEO.

Regarding the focus on diversification, Ana Figueiredo emphasised that Meo is an integrated operator.

"We are the only operator in the market with all the infrastructures," whether satellites, data centres, submarine cable mooring stations, fibre optic network, and 5G, in other words, "the traditional telco operator".

"Our revenue diversification obviously comes from our focus on the B2B [business] segment, on what we call everything that is an ICT component and, therefore, combining connectivity with IT and, obviously, with digital security," he says.

On the consumer side, "we've been innovating, providing more services to our consumer clients, such as Meo Energia, and, on the other hand, we've also been developing our activity through Labs," which "is just a laboratory, it's become a centre or a business line, also exporting Portuguese technology to other countries and other geographies," which allows us to grow across borders.

"We obviously have the ambition to continue growing, to continue leading, and we've also set ourselves the goal of doubling what we call non-telco revenue over the next three years," she added.

All of this "prepares the company for what will be, let's say, the big challenges, whether in artificial intelligence, preparing ourselves to also be a relevant player in edge computing" by taking advantage of the infrastructures, "which are unique, and therefore I think we have the right strategy to embrace the challenges," she emphasised.

However, "it's fundamental for the country" to have a context "that can accelerate investment" and not the other way round, hence the importance of industrial policy and an "appropriate and balanced" regulatory policy, she concluded.

ALU/ADB // ADB.

Lusa