The European Commission has approved a joint venture founded by several of Europe’s leading telecommunications providers, including Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone. The goal of this partnership is to create a revolutionary type of digital advertising platform that will offer a technology solution for digital advertising, while putting privacy first.   The holding company, which will be headquartered in Belgium and managed independently, will include a 25% ownership position from each of the major telecom companies. The platform was created with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union in mind, and it has already undergone successful testing in Germany. The platform will be made accessible to any operator in Europe.   To activate messages from marketers via publishers, consumers must explicitly opt-in to the new platform. The only item communicated is a “pseudo-anonymous digital token” that cannot be reverse-engineered. With improved transparency, protection and supervision over…