Well, thank you, Cecilia, and it's very nice to be here with all of you today. It's been about two months since I became the CEO of Nokia and one of the privileges in my start has been the chance to meet with so many different stakeholders, customers, investors and of course employees. And one of the groups that I met with and talked a little bit about AI and quantum and future technologies with recently was a group of early career employees at Nokia, recent university graduates. And what was interesting in their perspective was their excitement and almost their frustration at the opportunity that was in front of us and how we could move faster with AI, leverage these technologies more quickly. And you know, if you think about it from their perspective, in their mindset, AI is, you know, AI is what they're growing up with. For them, they don't think of googling like some of us might think of, they think of using ChatGPT or, you know, potentially Perplexity or Claude or one of these other platforms. And it was exciting for me as the CEO to see that kind of that agile mindset, that mindset about, you know, what is next in technology and where, how can we use technology to unlock new potential. And ultimately that's what technology is about, unlocking human potential. And as someone that, you know, started my career when the internet super cycle was started in the late '90s, it also reminds me of a saying that while history doesn't repeat itself, it often rhymes. And you know, if I think about being here in Europe, here in Europe, we need to make sure that actually when we go from the internet super cycle to the AI super cycle, history does not repeat itself in Europe. And that's because when you think about the world today, seven of 10 of the world's most valuable companies are actually technology companies. None of them are in Europe. And in fact, Nokia used to be one of those companies. In its peak in 1999, it was one of the most valuable winners in the mobile telecom era. Europe had global winners.
And the reality is today we still have great companies in Europe and we have great companies in technology in particular. ASML is the undisputed global leader in semiconductor machinery. Simply put, the AI revolution, what we are seeing in technology, autonomous vehicles would not be happening without ASML. SAP, we're one of the many companies that runs their business relies on SAP, a global leader in enterprise software and really a disruptive leader in terms of enabling productivity, cloud and early on AI applications as well. And as Cecilia talked about, we have two companies in Europe, Ericsson and Nokia that are the only two companies in the Western world that deliver mobile connectivity at scale. It's really incredible. In fact, the champions are here in Europe. And so the question that's on my mind is how can we go from some of these targeted critical areas of technology leadership to creating a much bigger generation of winners in Europe during the AI super cycle. It's very obvious to me Europe has the talent, it has the natural resources, it has the innovation mindset and the capital to be able to do this. But I think we have to ask ourselves as we look at this cycle, how can we make sure that we make the right choices today so that when we look back 20 or 30 years from now, we're not in the same position that we were in the internet cycle. And as the CEO of a technology company in Europe and albeit obviously an American, I've actually had the opportunity to be a part of innovation in Europe. I helped lead the Lumi supercomputer, deploy that in Finland. I worked on a number of other AI supercomputing projects. I was in Italy a few weeks ago and saw ENI's new HPC6 supercomputer. I know that the opportunity is here. And I believe if we work together and collaborate, we can actually seize these tremendous opportunities in AI in the emerging future for quantum and take advantage and be leaders in this technology super cycle.
And it's not just what we're seeing today in the early stages of AI, you know, data center investments, large language models, obviously Gen AI, it's the things coming just around the corner. It's augmented and virtual reality, robotics, agentic AI. These are platforms that create tremendous opportunity. In fact, if you think about it, you may have noticed Google announced new AR XR glasses incorporating their AI Gemini Assistant and they're one. But Meta has also made innovations. Two US companies. But Meta's collaboration was interesting to me. You know who they partnered with? They partnered with Luxottica and Ray-Ban, a European company to build a very cool, probably the coolest piece of tech in a long time, around an AR augmented set of glasses. And they're doing so running on 5G networks provided by companies like Nokia and Ericsson. And what I'm confident in as I see these innovations is we are at the front end of a technology super cycle. These are all indications that are at the beginning of the super cycle much like what we saw with internet browsers in the early days for those of you like me that remember that time. I see a few faces that probably don't but nonetheless and I think there's a great opportunity for Europe to have the opportunity to be real leaders in this space particularly when I think about the geopolitical context that exists today. But to do so, there's a few things we have to do to take immediate action.
First, the first thing is European companies need access to a scale market at home. This is the massive advantage that when you think about the US or China, they have and they play it in different ways, but both have access to home markets that deliver scale. And let me start with a reference in telco because telco is a market where today we don't have a scale advantage. Thank you. Whoop. That's not going to work. The scale market today, if you look at the US, the average number of subscribers a US telco operator has is 100 million. That's about 29% of the population per operator. In India, comparable operators have about 260 million subscribers. Now, both are very large markets, of course, single markets, but that's 18%. In Europe, do you know what the average number of subscribers per operator is? It's about 4 million. That's less than 1% of the population per operator. And of course, I recognize there are sovereignty considerations. This is relevant. But 1% is not access to a scale market. And if we just simply allow European telecom operators to consolidate in many countries from four to three like you've seen in the US, like you've seen in India, if we allow that to happen what we will see is greater scale will unlock true investment and innovation in 5G and 6G and it's not just 5G and 6G we'll see accelerated investments in broadband to home. We'll see new innovations in services and technologies. And that's why this is so important because when you think about the internet era, the internet era was largely described by devices. We started off with the fixed internet. We went to mobile internet. But the AI era is fundamentally about advanced connectivity. And it's not just about performance. AI fundamentally means we have to rethink how we design networks, the services we deliver, how we handle those data demands and how we do so in a secure and reliable manner.
Because if you think about augmented reality for a minute, if you picture what that might look like, there's no way that I can have interruptions and connectivity. And I was on the train yesterday from Paris and I was on a phone call and the phone call dropped. And it wasn't because the Eurostar was going 280 kilometers an hour. It was because, oop, I entered Belgium. It's a great example. And this is the kind of thing where a scale mindset matters. And if in AI, we can't afford to have those brief interruptions. And so when I think of connectivity, I think of advanced connectivity as the on switch for artificial intelligence. And again, we have two great companies here that provide connectivity solutions. Two global champions, certainly champions of the Western world. We have to enable them with a scale market. And if you think about it, I touched on the US, I touched on China. India has the same thing, a growing economy and a great technology base. And I was, as I said before, I was privileged to be a part of the supercomputing investments in the EU. And I'm confident that when we look back in a decade or two decades we'll see scientific, we'll see technological innovation from these but on the other side I think, you know, it's not just about enabling investment we have to allow a regulatory environment that permits scale and permits scale in commercial deployments. So when we talk about AI gigafactories I'm excited about the progress and the opportunity that that presents for European companies. But we need to give European players the access to scale markets so they can actually justify the investment in large scale AI technologies that will be needed to be able to use those gigafactories. Otherwise, we'll be subsidizing gigafactories for other scale players, European, American companies or other established players to continue to participate. So my ask is let's make sure we learn from the internet era and we make sure history does not repeat itself.
Second, scale is important but we also need a true digital single market and I touched on that example going from France to Belgium. The reason that happens is we don't have a unified spectrum process. And in fact, if you look at what happened with 5G spectrum allocation, we need to make sure we don't repeat that with 6G spectrum allocation. Nokia is a global leader in 5G standalone, which is a fully independent 5G network. So 5G standalone means I've stood up a pure network in 5G. And it's more than just the data bandwidth you get on your device. It's the services that I can enable. It's services that allow defense capability, allows public safety. It's services that allow private enterprises to access it. We're seeing adoption and use cases for hospitals, for mobile medical care, many, many other innovations. And 5G standalone is important because it's the stepping stone to 5G advanced. It's where we'll see these applications like augmented reality, like autonomous vehicles start to get adopted at scale. And it will ultimately lead to 6G. And if you look at China, and if you've been to China recently, you'll note that they have a ton of autonomous vehicles. They're leading in robotics. They're investing in networks. 80% of their mobile users have access to a 5G standalone network. India is second, 50% availability. The US not doing so great. 25% of its network has access to 5G standalone. Europe 2%. So, it's decisions that are made or I would actually say decisions that have not been made from over a decade ago that are now playing out in the technology that our companies, our consumers have access to. And that impacts our innovation, our agility, and I believe fundamentally impacts European competitiveness far beyond the technology industry. You know, we were late in Europe on 5G deployment and as I said, fragmented spectrum allocation was one of the key factors. We need to allow harmonized spectrum allocation across EU member states. This is something that Enria and Mario Draghi's reports both called for. This is something we need to adhere to.
And then finally, my last point is Europe needs trusted technology and technology from trusted partners. What's different in tech from many other industries is winners are created in technology cycles. When there's a transition in cycle, you have new winners. That's the opportunity. It's very different. If you think about manufacturing, consumer products, brands sustain multiple portfolios, right? They multiple generations. We can all think of some of those brands. But in technology, it's different. You go through a technology transition. New winners are created. Former winners become sidelined in many cases. And it's not a coincidence that when you think about China's rise over the last three decades, it's happened on the back of the internet super cycle because technology has been a huge part of their story from the supply chain and manufacturing to the R&D to the innovation and to the investment. They've leveraged this super cycle. They've invested in the internet, drones, semiconductors. These are all things that they benefited from this cycle. And if you think also about technology, the other key thing about technology is, you know, both if I think about supercomputing, but I go all the way back to the beginning of the internet or many other innovations in semiconductors, they're all born out of the defense needs in defense technology that spurned a ton of communications downstream. You know, the reality is times of adversity often are the times that spur tremendous incredible innovation. And I reflect on what's happening in Europe right now and particularly on our eastern border with Russia's illegal invasion of the Ukraine. It's a human tragedy, but it's also a catalyst for investment in innovation in defense infrastructure and innovation in defense adjacent technologies.
One of the key elements of that, for example, is connectivity and the difference and you've seen the recent reports about some of the advantages that the Ukrainian defense forces are having. One of the key things is getting access to real-time, actionable intelligence on the battlefield. That's because they've got high performance, trusted, and resilient connectivity. And despite what you might hear from certain industry players, it's not all satellite technology. Nokia's technology is actually helping strengthen Europe and NATO's defense. It's incredibly important in our home country, Finland's eastern border, where we share 1,200 kilometers with Russia. It's important that we have trusted connectivity in that environment. And defense is a market for us that's important not only because it's the integration of public and private networks, but it's a source of ongoing innovation for the market because trust is the fundamental factor. If you don't have technology you can trust, then you can't rely on it across all of your core functions and systems. And the reality is connectivity today is essential to governments, to utilities, to transports, to every business, to every consumer. We live, we cannot probably imagine our lives without digital connectivity. And we're using today 5G, fiber, IP, optical networks, and it's conveying personal information, critical sensitive information, in some cases mission critical information. But today, Europe's mobile networks, 4G and 5G mobile networks still contain 37% untrusted equipment. In some European countries, that goes as high as 60%. Including in Finland. It's alarming. Western security agencies have repeatedly warned that hostile actors are targeting our intellectual property and threatening our industrial future. 5 years after EU advised its members to strip out untrusted technology. Why is Europe still allowing high-risk infrastructure in European telecommunication networks? European governments need to lead here, protect their industries and their citizens by replacing untrusted technology with trusted solutions. The EU's 5G security toolbox should be extended to all telecom technologies, fiber, IP, optical, and made compulsory in all member states.
As I said, Europe has unique technology assets that will play a pivotal role in the AI super cycle. Europe has tremendous potential. I believe in it. That's why I came here. And we have the opportunity to create a new generation of winners in the AI super cycle. And I believe that in Europe, because of some of the values that we have here, not only will those winners create great commercial value, they'll help unlock human potential and they'll advance humanity's progress. And I really look forward to working with all of you to make sure that future happens. Thank you very much.
