Telecom CEOs: US regulators better than Europe

The CEOs of AT&T, Vodafone and Telefonica — three of the world's largest cellphone companies — had some rare words of praise for U.S. regulators, saying they're doing better than their European counterparts in promoting faster wireless data networks.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told an audience at Mobile World Congress, the world's largest cellphone trade show, that the U.S. government's practice of selling phone companies large swathes of space of the airwaves for perpetual use was helping encourage companies, including AT&T, to build out large networks using the latest "LTE" technology. By contrast, many European countries lease out space on their airwaves for eight- to 15-year terms. The perpetual licenses in the U.S. gives phone companies the incentive to invest, Stephenson said. The large, contiguous slices of spectrum the U.S. sold in its latest auctions make it easy to build fast networks, he added.