Radical cost-cutting to the tune of €100 billion may well be required in the hyper-competitive European telecoms sector if operators in the region are to achieve sustainable growth.

This is one of the headline findings of a new report by AlixPartners, a business advisory group, seen by the Financial Times (FT).

As part of the study, AlixPartners interviewed senior telecoms executives across France, Germany, Italy and the UK.

Nearly 6 out of every ten respondents said they would like to adopt “radical” cost-cutting, but more than two-thirds held up their hands and said company policy on cost reduction had not changed over the past five years.

The report draws attention to the bind in which European operators find themselves in.

While 4G investment is needed to try and keep up with rivals, regulatory and competitive pressures continue to turn the screw on revenues.

Eric Benedict, managing director at AlixPartners, told the FT that the findings of the report shed light on the “immense challenges facing European telecoms operators, who are today the poor relatives of their North American cousins”.

“In order to stem the tide of revenue decline,” he added, “they must admit the difficult truth that their business models need to be fundamentally redesigned and further simplified.”

Worryingly for the state of the European telecoms sector, while more than half of survey respondents said infrastructure investment on next-generation networks – such as 4G – would increase, only a third expected “healthy returns”.