Reliable and resilient connectivity: A fundamental resource for the digital world
The digitisation of our economies, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to a reliance on fast and resilient digital infrastructure. Digital infrastructure is the foundation for tech innovation, which in turn is essential for Europe’s growth, productivity, and competitiveness. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated the critical role of digital infrastructure in enabling national defence and emergency response.
As Europe navigates an increasingly uncertain and unpredictable geopolitical landscape, governments must act to defend the fundamental resources that underpin Europe’s interests, values, and future prosperity. This means bolstering collective defence capabilities, reducing high-risk dependencies, and creating competitive, sovereign European ecosystems for critical technologies which drive future growth, such as AI and edge quantum. In all of this, the vital role of secure, reliable, low-latency connectivity as a critical enabler is often overlooked.
Europe’s response must be on a continental, if not global, scale. The EU’s security and economic prosperity is best served by a strategically open approach to sovereignty based on deeper partnerships with countries that share European values and interests. That is why we celebrate the EU–UK Security and Defence Partnership and why we would like to see it extended to include a specific workstream on connectivity resilience.
Connectivity as a resource under attack
Europe’s access to reliable and secure digital services and connectivity is increasingly exposed to political and security risks. The telecom infrastructure that underpins Europe’s connectivity is under attack across a number of vectors. In November 2024, a ship was suspected of severing two fibre-optic cables in the Baltic Sea, and in December of the same year, a tanker allegedly cut a subsea power connector between Finland and Estonia, damaging four telecommunication lines. Also in November 2024, the US government publicly revealed that Chinese state-affiliated cyber actors had aggressively targeted US telecom networks to conduct a broad cyber espionage campaign. Vodafone’s network Security Operations Centre responds to millions of attempted attacks on our networks and our customers each year. That number is sharply rising.
Private-sector operators of connectivity infrastructure are having to invest more to defend their networks – and the European societies and economies they serve – from these hybrid, frequently state-sponsored, attacks. At the same time, Europe’s telecoms sector continues to suffer from long-term underinvestment. For the last ten years, return on capital has been below the cost of capital in the telecoms sector. Europe’s highly fragmented market and increasing demand for nationally sovereign capabilities makes it hard for European operators to benefit from economies of scale. This sustained market failure is undermining the resilience of Europe’s critical digital infrastructure and operators’ ability to invest to keep pace with the rising threat.
Protecting Europe’s connectivity
In order to address these threats and vulnerabilities and boost European resilience, the EU should take the following actions.
Economic security
Given that critical connectivity infrastructure operators are increasingly required to invest for national security and resilience objectives, economic reforms are needed to ensure such investments are sustainable without undermining Europe’s competitiveness (e.g. through complex bureaucracy). Better investment in critical capabilities is a key priority outlined in the European Commission’s White Paper on the future of European defence.
This includes advancing a true European Digital Single Market that allows operators to scale across the bloc in order to deliver services more efficiently. The EU should harmonise regulatory frameworks across Member States, ensure consistent rules for all players offering equivalent services, and position the bloc as a global exporter of cybersecurity standards. Rather than seeking to onshore cyber and digital capabilities within individual Member States, pan-European connectivity players should be enabled to leverage and pool capabilities across Europe to better address transnational hybrid and cyber threats.
A whole-of-society approach to security and resilience
In the light of evolving hybrid and asymmetric threats to critical infrastructure, there is growing recognition of the need for a comprehensive, society-wide approach to security and resilience across Europe. Recent calls, including by former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, have highlighted the importance of integrating civilian and private-sector actors into national and EU security and defence strategies. This was reflected in the EU’s 2025 Preparedness Union Strategy, which explicitly recognises telecommunications as one of the Union’s ‘essential societal functions’.
European governments should foster structured public–private partnerships both within the bloc and alongside trusted partners to counter state-sponsored threats. Joint exercising and integrated crisis-management frameworks would enhance Europe’s crisis preparedness. For example, in the cyber domain, targeted intelligence-sharing and joint capacity-building between governments, European or national agencies, and trusted industry players would strengthen collective preparedness. Scenario planning on a continental scale for the most likely set of geopolitical shocks would highlight where redundant connectivity or European sovereign digital capabilities are most needed and inform priorities for the Connect Europe and other pooled funding. Governments should identify opportunities and potential for true public–private partnerships and if needed develop the legal frameworks to transition from a theoretical or academic foundation into bold and measurable action.
Connectivity security partnerships
The EU should build additional partnerships with capable and critical national infrastructure providers alongside already existing security and defence partnerships. In this context, the new EU–UK Security and Defence Partnership is encouraging, particularly its commitments to strengthen cooperation in cybersecurity, subsea cables, space security, and emerging disruptive technologies. These commitments should now translate into concrete joint initiatives that focus on strengthening shared digital and connectivity infrastructure. For example, on satellite, greater coordination is needed on spectrum licensing and the development of a pan-European resilient satellite infrastructure.
Furthermore, the EU and the UK must strengthen cooperation in broader digital and connectivity security domains, including stronger coordination on 5G and 6G, next-generation communication networks, AI deployment, quantum technologies, data governance, cross-border data flow, emerging tech standardisation, and digital skills. A stronger EU–UK digital and connectivity partnership would bolster both sides’ digital competitiveness and resilience.
The EU should take a strategically open approach to digital sovereignty. In line with the EU’s 2030 Digital Compass Communication, the EU should develop stronger digital trade and investment partnerships with countries that share European values and encourage joint innovation and entrepreneurship. By actively fostering a broader and more diverse trusted supplier base, Europe will become both more secure and more prosperous.
Conclusion
Connectivity is an indispensable resource under attack. Threats to connectivity infrastructure are accelerating more rapidly than the ability of Europe’s telecom sector to keep pace. Governments should work with the telecoms sector to create the regulatory and economic conditions for growth and to develop agile operational partnerships with industry as part of a whole-of-society approach to security and resilience. The challenges are complex and multifaceted, demanding an integrated, collaborative approach of rethinking traditional responsibilities and the conservative split between state and industry capabilities. The EU needs to invest in defence and security partnerships based not on geography but on shared values, with digital security and resilience at their heart.