BARCELONA — Europe’s telecommunication firms are ramping up calls for more industry consolidation to help the region compete more effectively with superpowers like the U.S. and China on key technologies like 5G and artificial intelligence.

Last week at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show in Barcelona, CEOs of several telecoms firms called on regulators to make it easier for them to combine their operations with other businesses and reduce the overall number of carriers operating across the continent.

Currently, there are numerous telco players operating in multiple EU countries and non-EU members such as the U.K. However, telco chiefs told CNBC this situation is untenable, as they’re unable to compete effectively when it comes to price and network quality.

“If we’re going to invest in technology, in deep know-how, and bring drastic change, positive drastic change in Europe — like other large technological companies have done in the U.S. or we’re seeing today in China — we need scale,” Marc Murtra, CEO of Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica, told CNBC’s Karen Tso in an interview.

“To be able to get scale, we need to consolidate a fragmented market like the telecoms market in Europe,” Murtra added. “And for that, we need a regulation that allows us to consolidate. So what we do ask is: please unleash us. Let us gain scale. Let us invest in technology and bring upon productive change.”

Christel Heydemann, CEO of French carrier Orange, said that while some mega-deal activity is starting to gather pace in Europe, more needs to be done to guarantee the continent’s competitiveness on the world stage.

Last year, Orange closed a deal to merge its Spanish operations with local mobile network provider Masmovil. Meanwhile, more recently, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority approved a £15 billion ($19 billion) merger between telecoms firms Vodafone and Three in the U.K., subject to certain conditions.

“We’ve been actively driving consolidation in Europe,” Orange’s Heydemann told CNBC. “We see things changing now. There’s still a lot of hope.”

However, she added: “I think there’s a lot of pressure in Europe from the business environment on our political leaders to get things to change. But really, things have not yet changed.”

During a fiery keynote address on Monday, the CEO of German telco Deutsche Telekom, Tim Höttges, said that other telco markets such as the U.S. and India have condensed in size to only a handful of players.

The American telco industry is dominated by its three largest mobile network operators, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. T-Mobile is majority-owned by Deutsche Telekom.

“We need a reform of the of the competition policy,” Höttges said onstage at MWC. “We have to be allowed to consolidate our activities.”

“There is no reason that every market has to operate with three or four operators,” he added. “We should build a European single market … because, if we cannot increase our consumer prices, if we cannot charge the over-the-top players, we have to get efficiencies out of the scale which we created.”

“Over-the-top” refers to media platforms such as Netflix that deliver content over the internet, bypassing traditional cable networks.

Meanwhile, last year former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi released a long-awaited report that urged radical reforms to the EU through a new industrial strategy to ensure its competitiveness.

It also calls for a new Digital Networks Act that would look to improve incentives for telcos to build next-generation mobile networks, reduce compliance costs, improve connectivity for end-users, and harmonize EU policy across the network spectrum, or the range of radio frequencies used for wireless communication.

“The common theme and the mood music is certainly reducing ex-ante regulation and to foster what they would call a more competitive environment which is an environment more conducive of consolidation,” Ookla’s Kehoe told CNBC. “Moving forward, I think that there will be more consolidation.”

However, the telco industry has some way to go toward seeing transformational cross-border mergers and acquisitions, Kehoe added.

For many telco industry analysts, the demands for increased consolidation is nothing new.

“European telco CEOs have never been shy about calling for consolidation and growth-friendly regulation,” Nik Willetts, CEO of the telco industry association TM Forum, told CNBC. “But regulation is only one piece of the puzzle.”

“In the last 12 months we’ve seen a new energy from our members in Europe to get on with the huge task to transform themselves: simplifying, modernizing and automating their operations and legacy tech.”

“This will make it possible to rapidly adapt to new customer needs and market realities, whether building new partnerships, undergoing M&A or delayering integrated businesses – all trends we expect to reach new heights over the next 24 months,” he added.

BEIJING — Chinese videostreaming platform iQiyi announced Thursday it plans later this year to open its first full-fledged theme park in China based on characters from its own shows.

The forthcoming “iQiyi Land” is set to open in the city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu province, just over two hours from Shanghai by high-speed train. The company said the theme park will include seven types of attractions — including immersive theater, interactive film sets and experiences that use virtual reality — largely based on characters from iQiyi’s films and television dramas.

It’s the latest company to bet that local consumers will spend more on experiences, despite tepid retail sales.

Legoland is opening its first China resort in Shanghai this summer, while Warner Bros. Discovery last month announced it is opening a “Harry Potter Studio Tour” in 2027 in the same city. Chinese toy company Pop Mart opened a themed “Pop Land” in Beijing in late 2023, which has become the most popular attraction in the city’s business district, according to rankings from Dianping.

IQiyi’s planned theme park builds on the company’s recent success with VR-specific attractions.

The company has developed technology that combines VR headsets with moving platforms — giving visitors the impression that they are walking, riding on boats or sitting in a flying carriage. That means a theme park-like experience can be compressed into a space as small as a square just 57 feet long.

Since iQiyi’s first dedicated VR experience opened in Shanghai two years ago, the company has worked with business partners to open more than 40 locations in at least 20 Chinese cities. One VR experience based on iQiyi’s “Strange Tales of the Tang Dynasty: Journey to the West” gained more than 100,000 visitors in its first year of opening, according to the company.

VR, gaming and artificial intelligence have enabled the emergence of “distributed” theme parks that are more compact, interactive and able to iterate content more quickly, Hang Zhang, senior vice president at iQiyi, said in a Chinese statement translated by CNBC.

He said some of the VR-based experiences will first be released in iQiyi Land before they’re launched in other venues.

IQiyi shares closed nearly 3% higher in U.S. trading Thursday and are up 14% for the year so far.

The association announced Wednesday that the head of Disney Parks International would speak at its Asia expo this summer in Shanghai.

Disney, whose Disneyland in Shanghai opened in 2016, reported a 28% year-on-year increase in international parks and experiences operating income in the quarter ended Dec. 28, in contrast with a 5% decline in the U.S.

Comcast, whose Universal Studios Beijing opened in 2021, said higher revenue at its international theme parks offset lower guest attendance at its U.S. parks in the fourth quarter.

Tourism has been a rare bright spot in China’s otherwise lackluster consumer market. The consumer price index, an indicator of domestic demand, rose by just 0.2% last year while the tourism component increased by 3.5%.

China’s plan to boost consumption this year called specifically for developing the experience economy. IQiyi has previously worked with a local tourism board to produce a television drama set in a remote part of China, drawing visitors.

However, competition in content remains fierce. IQiyi reported an 8% drop in 2024 revenue to 29.23 billion yuan, reversing a 10% increase the prior year.

Theme park projects can also face delays.

A Legoland in western China’s Sichuan province was originally scheduled to open by 2023. When CNBC contacted operator Merlin Entertainments about the project, the company only emphasized the summer opening of Legoland in Shanghai this summer.

Disclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC.