Key takeaways from IDC’s Telco Forum 2026 Barcelona

On March 1, 2026, IDC brought together senior telecom leaders, vendors, system integrators, cloud leaders, partners, and media in Barcelona to examine how the industry is evolving in an AI-driven world. The discussions reinforced a clear message: telecom transformation is no longer theoretical. It is structural, financial, operational and increasingly sovereign. Drawing on insights shared across the event; this blog captures the major themes shaping telecom strategy through 2030.

The four megatrends shaping telecoms through 2030

There are 4 compounding megatrends that have been reshaping the sector since 2022. Looking back, the telco industry has moved through a rapid succession of technological focal points: Network APIs as foundational enablers for exposing network capabilities; Generative AI as the entry point for process automation; and Agentic AI in 2025, which introduced autonomous decision-making into customer experience, network management, and enterprise solutions. In 2026, the critical new frontier for AI is inferencing, the shift from model training to real-time, distributed AI workload execution, and it is this transition that is forcing telcos to fundamentally rethink their infrastructure architecture and competitive positioning. Underpinning all of this are the four defining themes of 2026:

Structural transformation is intensifying. Business model reinvention is not new for telcos, but the pace has accelerated. Four distinct strategic paths are now in play simultaneously: the TechCo transition (embracing network-as-a-platform models), Delayering (separating ServCo, NetCo, and InfraCo entities to optimize asset utilization), Consolidation, and a redefined form of Convergence, that focuses on bundling fixed-mobile-satellite services and designed to lock in ARPU and reduce churn.
Network investment is tapering. The cyclical CAPEX peak from 5G non-standalone rollout has passed in high and middle-income markets. IDC forecasts a 1.5% decline in global telecom CAPEX in 2026, bringing the total to $320 billion, with CAPEX intensity projected to fall from 22% in 2024 toward 18% by the end of the decade. The drivers are multiple: the one-off FTTP spending peak is fading, satellite partnerships are smoothing access and transport investment, and a structural CAPEX -to-OPEX shift is underway as telcos increasingly rely on ISVs and cloud providers for virtualization and AI. The freed-up cash is flowing into shareholder returns, strategic investments, and targeted digital infrastructure plays.
AI adoption is crystallizing around inferencing and sovereign AI. In 2025, the buzzword was agentic AI. In 2026, it is inferencing, and the telcos have a genuine structural advantage to capitalize on it. With distributed infrastructure, low latency, and deep regulatory trust in their home markets, telcos are positioned to become national AI factories, delivering sovereign AI solutions to governments, healthcare systems, and regional enterprises. IDC’s survey data shows that AI compute spending is approaching a pivot point in 2027, when inferencing will overtake training as the dominant driver of AI infrastructure investment. Telcos that expand their data center footprint and deepen relationships with co-location providers now are positioning ahead of that curve.
LEO satellite partnerships are becoming strategic. Starlink has established an early lead as the preferred satellite partner for telcos globally. Use cases vary significantly by geography – D2D and satellite broadband in the US and Canada’s large, underserved coverage areas, disaster recovery in Europe’s dense markets, and transport and backhaul across Asia Pacific and Australia. What is clear across all regions is that the satellite-terrestrial boundary is dissolving into a hybrid connectivity model, and the telcos that forge the right partnerships now will have a differentiated coverage story that competitors simply cannot replicate terrestrially.

Balance, pivot, revolt: the transformation imperative

Telcos’ internal transformation focus for 2026 can be framed with three sharp words: balance, pivot and revolt.

Balance is the defining tension of 2026. According to IDC’s C-Suite Tech Survey (September 2025, n=45 telecom respondents), 52% of telco C-suite leaders have AI implementation as a top three priority, but 50% simultaneously have technology modernization as a top three priority. These can be complementary investments as telcos cannot get full value from AI if they have not addressed legacy system complexity, data governance gaps, and architectural debt; but they also compete as telcos must decide between investing in new capabilities that promise significant gains vs. unglamourous IT modernization initiatives which have often been neglected for years. This is at a time with funds for transformations are finely balanced: Telecom CAPEX is declining, though IDC forecasts a modest 5.2% growth in spend on operations and monetization systems in 2026, reaching $54 billion, as telcos invest in IT systems to monetize the billions in CAPEX invested in rolling out new wireless and fixed networks. 5.2% growth is far from a blank cheque, every dollar deployed in IT must demonstrably either cut cost or support new revenue.

The autonomous networks aspiration illustrates this balancing act with particular clarity. TM Forum data from 2025 shows that only 4% of operators self-reported achieving Level 4 autonomous network status, yet 85% aspire to reach that level by 2030. That is an extraordinary gap. According to IDC’s EMEA Telco Transformation Survey (July 2025, n=150), the barriers are familiar: interoperability failures and the persistent lack of a single source of truth in network data. Notably, these are precisely the same barriers that have constrained AI adoption more broadly.

Pivot means making deliberate choices about where to invest and what to sequence. Data quality, accessibility, security are all in focus in 2026. This is represented in telcos making positive investments to overhaul their network inventory systems and updating their data governance policies and infrastructure from customer data down to the network. For autonomous networks, IDC’s research points to a more granular, domain-specific approach gaining traction: telcos are identifying specific use cases, service assurance and fault management are the top automation priorities for EMEA telcos in 2026, and targeting specific domains (IP access, RAN, and core) for Level 4 capability. This is far more tractable than a blanket push to full autonomy. On the people side, 97% of telcos recognize gaps in their talent base for developing and using AI at scale. Sixty-five percent are investing in AI-enabled learning tools, and 58% are expanding internal upskilling programs, but with only 42% currently offering skills training, there is still a meaningful gap between recognition and action.

Revolt is the urgent call to fix customer commercialization before AI finally demolishes the buying behaviour telcos have relied on for decades. For example, a UK mobile subscriber paying £15 per month for 10GB, regularly consuming just 6GB, with known Disney+ and international roaming usage, was on renewal offered to take a device upgrade, to increase their data rate to 30GB for £18 or unlimited data for £24. There was no demand signal for a device, no upsell of complementary services, and no personalization of any kind. The customer found a 40GB plan with the same mobile provider on a comparison site for £7.50, a 50% ARPU reduction and 400% value giveaway. Comparison sites have been established for well over a decade empowering consumer to find the best deal with some manual effort. Today’s consumers and enterprises, however, are already beginning to use AI to undertake similar comparisons with far less manual effort.

The point is not just that this particular offer was poorly designed. The point is that the entire commercial model relies on customer inertia, and AI is systematically dismantling that inertia. As AI agents increasingly make purchasing decisions on behalf of consumers and enterprises, operators that cannot demonstrate differentiated, personalized value in real time will find their customer bases eroding with a speed and scale unlike anything seen before.

5G: from product to platform, and the 6G horizon

The back half of the 5G lifecycle represents an inflection point, but only if operators change their frame of reference. Core mobile remains solid: IDC projects a 2.0% CAGR in global mobile connections through 2029. The world will exceed 9 billion mobile connections within the next two years, surpassing the current global population of 8.3 billion. In saturated markets, however, the growth lever has shifted decisively from subscriber acquisition to retention and value extraction — which brings the customer experience and commercialization issues directly back into focus.

The bigger opportunity lies in the shift from 5G as a product to 5G as a platform. For the first five years of 5G, operators sold speed, latency, and connection density. The next phase is less about branding a connection as 5G and more about 5G as the underlying infrastructure that enables XR, drones, V2X, private 5G, and RedCap solutions to be viable, scalable, and mobile. The challenge is that these use cases do not scale in the millions the way mobility or FWA does, they scale in tens of thousands. That requires a fundamentally different approach to network architecture, back-end systems, and, critically, business models.

Integration complexity remains the most significant brake on enterprise 5G adoption. 46% percent of enterprises cite it as the primary adoption barrier. The solution is less ego and more ecosystem: operators need to be willing to play a back-end role in partner-led solutions rather than insisting on front-facing primacy. 74% of enterprises express interest in network slicing; 49% plan to increase fixed wireless access investment; 58% say they are interested in satellite connectivity, but many still have significant misconceptions about what satellite-to-device actually delivers today. Expectation management is part of the product.

On 6G, If the industry maintains the ten-year generational cycle, 6G commercial launches would begin around 2029. Technical specifications are still in the study phase at 3GPP. The defining features of 6G, AI-native architecture enabling autonomous self-optimization, integrated sensing that turns every cell tower into a radar station, quantum-resistant security, and new terahertz spectrum, collectively point toward a network that moves AI out of the data center and into the physical world. The concept of “physical AI,” or what one operator CTO termed “kinetic tokens,” suggests that 6G will not merely support AI-driven applications but will provide the real-time connectivity substrate that makes physical AI, autonomous robots, connected vehicles, intelligent infrastructure, a viable commercial reality.

The enterprise connectivity opportunity: vast, varied, and underserved

Enterprise connectivity budgets are growing. IDC’s Future Enterprise Connectivity Infrastructure and Services Survey (August 2025, n=758) shows that 37.5% of enterprises increased their connectivity budget by more than 10% over the last two years. For 2026, that proportion rises to 44%. The primary drivers are cloud migration, SaaS usage, AI, video, IoT and device density are driving up bandwidth requirements. Four in ten enterprises saw bandwidth demands increase by more than 50% over the past year. Among organizations with over 10,000 employees, 17% saw their bandwidth demands double. Retail and financial services lead in cumulative bandwidth growth, but the opportunity is sector-wide: only 40-46% of enterprises are at an advanced or market-leading stage of connectivity maturity. The majority are still on the journey and actively looking for guidance.

The question of who captures this opportunity, however, is not straightforward for network service providers. When IDC asked enterprises which provider types they see as best and worst placed to address their future WAN requirements, cloud providers ranked first at 29%, followed by IT partners at 28%, with network service providers third at 23%. More pointedly, in the “worst placed” ranking, network service providers came second. The reasons cited: not treating customers well 35%, limited IT and network capability 28%, and difficult to work with 26%.

This is a reputational and structural challenge, not just a product one. Cloud providers are perceived as having broad network capability, even though they fundamentally depend on telco partners for last-mile delivery. IT partners are perceived as having deep industry expertise, expertise that telcos themselves possess but has not been to communicate or commercialize effectively. The gap is therefore not simply about capability. It is about perception. Perception shapes purchasing decisions, which in turn shape market reality.

Encouragingly, telcos’ “best placed” positioning has improved in recent years as operators have prioritized customer experience and simplified portfolios to deliver more flexible, scalable, and accessible services aligned with enterprise demand. Network as a Service, or NaaS, is central to this shift. NaaS is a cloud-based delivery model in which connectivity, bandwidth, security, and routing are provisioned and consumed on demand via APIs or self-service portals. It abstracts the underlying physical infrastructure and allows enterprises to scale, configure, and optimize network resources without directly owning or managing hardware. Enterprise sentiment toward NaaS remains mixed, 32% said they could make it easier or cheaper for a service provider to manage their networks and security, and 26% said they could simplify self-managed network operations. But 19% said they would not want to be locked into one service provider’s platform regardless of the benefits, and 10% remain unfamiliar with NaaS entirely. The education gap is significant and closing it will require more than technical refinement. It demands commercial clarity, stronger communication, and deeper customer relationships. Ultimately, this is not just a transformation in network architecture. It is a transformation in trust, positioning, and perceived value.

The bottom line

The IDC Telco Forum 2026 in Barcelona surfaced a market that is, in many respects, more coherent in its direction than at any point in recent years, but also more demanding of execution discipline than most operators have yet demonstrated.

The opportunity in AI inferencing and sovereign infrastructure is real and structurally aligned with telcos’ natural positioning. The satellite-terrestrial convergence is creating a coverage differentiation story that was not available five years ago. The enterprise connectivity market is expanding, budget-rich, and hungry for strategic guidance. And 5G, finally maturing beyond its early-product phase, is approaching its platform moment.

But against each of these opportunities sits a structural challenge that must be addressed in parallel: legacy system complexity is limiting AI value extraction; autonomous network ambitions are outpacing organizational readiness; commercial and CX systems are still leaving significant value on the table; and enterprise perception of telcos’ breadth and quality of service lags behind the reality.

The telcos that will win this decade are those that treat these not as separate workstreams but as a single integrated transformation, one where the investment in networks, IT modernization, talent, customer experience, and ecosystem partnerships compounds into a durable competitive position. The window is open. The question, as always, is execution.

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