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Beyond revenue: why telecom’s future depends on profitability, not just revenue

On 24 September 2025, I moderated a panel at Connected Britain titled “Monetising Your Network for a Better Tomorrow” — or, as Carlos Bock aptly put it, “Monetising Your Network for a Better Today.” The panel brought together influential voices from across the telecom ecosystem — Ronan Kelly (Managing Director, AllPoints Fibre), Stefan Stanislawski (CEO, Lightning Fibre), Carlos Bock (Executive Chairman, F&W Networks), Will Rhodes (Carrier Managed Service Consultant, Ciena), and Dan Bloch (Senior VP Global Solution, Calix) — to tackle one of the industry’s most urgent challenges: how to unlock new value in a market that’s saturated, commoditised, and fiercely competitive.

The answer, it turns out, isn’t about chasing revenue growth. It’s about profitability.

From ARPU to AMPU: a necessary shift in focus

For more than a decade, telecom operators have measured success by one metric above all others: average revenue per user (ARPU). But as competition intensifies and price wars continue to drive down returns, ARPU alone tells an incomplete story. Carlos Bock noted, customers today are getting a “Ferrari for the price of a Honda.” Ultra-fast, highly reliable connectivity is priced like a commodity — and operators have been complicit in that race to the bottom.

It’s time to shift the industry’s focus from ARPU to AMPU (Average Margin Per User). Understanding what customers pay is no longer enough — telcos must grasp what each user contributes to profitability. During the panel, Ronan Kelly posed a simple yet revealing question: “Who here knows their AMPU?” Out of more than 200 attendees, only two raised their hands. This striking moment underscored a critical gap — most operators lack visibility into per-user margin data, even though it’s essential for informed strategic decisions.

Ultimately, telcos are valued not by the size of their top-line revenue, but by their EBITDA margin — the efficiency with which they generate earnings, as measured by metrics like Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) and EBITDA multiples.

Beyond connectivity: monetisation through value creation

Connectivity will always be the bedrock of telecom. But as bandwidth becomes abundant and undifferentiated, telcos must move beyond selling “pipes” and start selling outcomes.

That means evolving from a product-centric mindset — faster speeds, bigger data packages — to a customer-centric value proposition that focuses on enterprises language and outcomes e.g., visibility, reliability, security, and predictability.

Monetisation isn’t just about launching new services; it’s also about repackaging and optimising what already exists. Whether that’s offering connectivity-as-a-service, bundling security capabilities, or embedding network insights into enterprise workflows, the goal is the same: deliver differentiated value that customers are willing to pay a premium for.

One example came from Stefan Stanislawski, highlighted how telcos can unlock profitability by embedding themselves in their communities. By supporting initiatives like the Heathfield Agricultural Show and enabling smart farming through real-time data transmission, remote monitoring, and IoT connectivity, Lightning Fibre is not just selling broadband — it’s solving real challenges for rural customers. This approach transforms the telco from a utility provider into a trusted local brand. As Stefan put it, “We want to build a community, we want to build a local brand, we want to connect to our customers in these rural areas, understand their challenges, and solve their problems.”

AI as a catalyst for profit growth

Emerging technologies — especially AI, GenAI and Agentic AI — will be the defining factor separating the winners from the laggards.

Ronan Kelly captured this shift bluntly: “there are two types of telcos — those that leverage AI, and those that don’t. The latter, are on a path to bankruptcy.” The industry is already bifurcating into two camps: those integrating AI deeply into operations and customer offerings, and those resisting it. The former will see margins expand, the latter risk irrelevance.

But AI adoption isn’t just a technology challenge — it’s a people challenge. Ronan highlighted the fear many employees feel about AI changing their roles (and how they feel as if they were cheating), Ronan linked this to the early days of Excel: “Did the person who switched from paper to spreadsheets feel like they were cheating?”

AI and automation have real impact on operational efficiency (driving down costs) and revenue enablement (enhancing targeting, personalising offerings, and uncovering new revenue streams). Operators that use AI to intelligently segment customers, tailor marketing, and optimise service delivery will achieve higher margins and stronger competitive positioning.

Dan Bloch added that AI’s real power lies in precision — enabling targeted marketing, customer segmentation, and focused sales strategies. Instead of casting a wide net, “Telcos can use AI to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time, driving both relevance and profitability.“

Profit through partnerships and ecosystems

The B2B telecom ecosystem is undergoing significant disruption. Hyperscalers, system integrators, multicloud providers, and other non-traditional players are increasingly offering communication services — often with greater agility and deeper enterprise integration. This shift is intensifying competition and pressuring telcos in their core markets.

The result is a fragmented landscape where traditional telcos can no longer rely solely on infrastructure ownership or legacy relationships. Instead, they must rethink their role in the value chain — moving from isolated service providers to collaborative ecosystem partners. Sustainable monetisation will depend on telcos’ ability to co-create value with these emerging players, rather than compete against them in a zero-sum game.

Will Rhodes stressed that “no single operator can capture the full value chain alone. Sustainable monetisation will depend on ecosystem collaboration — where each player understands its value contribution and shares in the resulting margins.”

Whether it’s partnering with cloud hyperscalers for edge services, security vendors for managed offerings, or local organisations to build community-focused solutions, the future of telecom monetisation will be built on shared value creation rather than isolated competition.

What “good” looks like 

In this new era, successful telecom operators will:

  • Know their profitability at a granular level, including per-user margins.
  • Shift from network providers to value enablers, delivering capabilities and outcomes rather than just connectivity.
  • Use AI strategically to boost both efficiency and revenue.
  • Build ecosystems that expand value creation and customer relevance.

The operators that fail to evolve will continue competing on price — and in doing so, erode the very margins they need to survive.

Final thoughts

Telecom’s future growth story isn’t about adding more zeros to the revenue line. It’s about building a business that’s profitable, resilient, and indispensable. That requires a mindset shift — from chasing scale to maximising value, from ARPU to AMPU, and from selling bandwidth to selling outcomes.

To close the session, I asked each panellist to leave the audience with one word that captures their vision for the future of telecom:

  • Carlos → Optimise
  • Stefan → Relationship
  • Dan → Personalise
  • Ronan → Differentiate
  • Will → Partner

As the Connected Britain panel made clear, the telcos that embrace this transformation will not only monetise their networks for a better tomorrow — they’ll secure their profitability today.

AI in EMEA 2025, a recent eBook, features a section on telco. You can download it here.

For more information on AI, join our 2026 tech predictions webcast on Dec 3rd. The Agentic Business Future: Driving Resilience, Sovereignty, and Innovation in EMEA, IDC’s Tech Predictions for 2026 and Beyond.

Masarra Mohamad - Senior Research Analyst, European 5G Enterprise Strategies - IDC

Analyst Profile
Masarra Mohamed is a senior research analyst specializing in analysing the connectivity and communications services markets, focusing on the changing networking requirements, trends, and competitive dynamics that support enterprises in their digital transformation. She explores how enterprise network strategies evolve to enable cloud, AI, and security.

In today’s crowded tech market, features don’t sell. Value does. And yet, far too many sales teams are still stuck pushing product specs while their competitors walk away with the contracts. 

The truth? If your team can’t lead with business value, you’re already behind. 

High-performance sales teams are not created by chance. It’s not about having the loudest pitch or the biggest pipeline. It’s about building teams that can step into the boardroom as trusted advisors. Teams who can link your technology to measurable outcomes that your clients can’t ignore. 

And here’s the catch: most organisations think they’re doing this. Almost none are. 

What Does “Business Value” Really Mean in Sales? 

So, what does it really take to transform a standard sales team into a high-performing one? One that consistently sells business value as an outcome? 

In today’s technology landscape, having an innovative product is just the starting point. What truly sets successful tech vendors apart is their ability to demonstrate clear, measurable business value and return on investment (ROI) to their customers. 

To get there, marketing, sales, and sales enablement leadership must work together to build strong messaging, market insights, and client success stories that can be leveraged in customer interactions. Leading the discussion on what the company can do for the customer and then quantifying the value of that partnership, builds trust and sets a high-performance benchmark. 

How to Equip Sales Teams to Lead with Value 

Not all enterprises can align every salesperson to a consistent value message for each product or service. Salespeople bring a range of individual styles into their relationships, but what unites them is the focus on building trust and instilling confidence in their solutions.  

Despite this need, many organisations lack the experience to develop value-based messaging, collateral, and enablement programs that bring this confidence to life. Creating alignment across teams requires structure, expertise, and the right insights. 

How IDC Helps Sales Teams Sell on Business Value 

At IDC, we work with technology vendors worldwide to strengthen their ability to sell based on business value and tangible outcomes. Our analysts and consultants deliver market insights, benchmarks, and customer validation that empower marketing, sales, and enablement leaders to align around proven value delivery. 

Through tailored sales enablement workshops, value-based messaging frameworks, and analyst-led collateral, IDC equips teams to engage customers with confidence and demonstrate measurable ROI. Get in touch to learn more. 

 

Nathan Budd - Senior Director, Custom Solutions - IDC

Analyst Profile
Nathan Budd is a consulting director, working across strategic, market intelligence and go-to-market solutions. With experience across a spectrum of ICT projects and clients, he delivers a breadth of knowledge and insight to the IDC European consulting team. Over the years, Nathan has worked with CEOs, industry forums, executives and sales teams, to define market strategy, positioning and sources of revenue growth. He is an experienced speaker, project lead and facilitator, bringing energy and perspective, while maintaining the connect between strategic-level thinking and grass-roots action.

A market that demands its own perspective

IDC today published the European Contact Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) MarketScape, recognizing that Europe’s contact center landscape is shaped by unique regional dynamics, stringent regulatory frameworks, and a more measured approach to adopting new technologies. These characteristics make it essential to evaluate Europe as a distinct market rather than as an extension of global models. Success in this region depends on understanding trust, compliance, and local engagement at a much deeper level.

A market defined by diversity and regulation

The European CCaaS market is expanding rapidly, projected to grow from US$1.5 billion in 2024 to US$3.7 billion by 2029. Yet, it remains highly diverse and fragmented. Differences in regulation, business culture, and language shape how contact centers operate and adopt technology. For example, priorities such as pricing, professional services, and data residency vary widely across key markets, underscoring the importance of regional insight and tailored strategies over a one-size-fits-all approach.

Why a European MarketScape matters

The IDC European CCaaS MarketScape provides an in-depth assessment of how vendors address this diversity. It evaluates how effectively they align their strategies and offerings with Europe’s regulatory, cultural, and operational realities.

It also considers how vendors demonstrate thought leadership — not by simply leading with innovation, but by helping contact centers modernize responsibly. This includes educating customers on the value of digital transformation, offering support to overcome adoption barriers, and using partnerships to bridge linguistic and cultural gaps while building trust.

By capturing these nuances, the IDC European CCaaS MarketScape delivers a region-specific perspective that reflects the complexity, diversity, and maturity of Europe’s contact center ecosystem — and highlights the industry’s steady evolution toward AI-driven, compliant, and customer-centric operations.

IDC MarketScape: European Contact Center-as-a-Service Applications Software 2025 Vendor Assessment is available now.

If you have a question about anything, please fill in this form.

Oru Mohiuddin - Research Director - IDC

Analyst Profile
Oru Mohiuddin is a Research Director in the European Enterprise Communications and Collaboration team. Based in London, she is responsible for IDC’s coverage of Unified Communications and Collaboration in the region. Her work focuses on tracking the markets for premise-based and cloud solutions and new developments and trends, particularly in the light of changing work patterns impacting the traditional mode of enterprise communication. Prior to joining IDC, Oru worked for Euromonitor International, where she focused on Future of Work and technology in the SMB context. She also worked in New York and Bangladesh and speaks English and Bengali. Oru was awarded Chevening Scholarship by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office to pursue her MSc in International Development from the University of Birmingham. In addition, Oru has a BA from Marymount Manhattan College in New York.

ROI Is the New Mandate: Events Are Back at the Center

B2B tech marketers are navigating tighter budgets and higher expectations in 2026. With ROI under the microscope, one strategy is emerging as both high-impact and measurable: events. IDC’s latest Sponsor Survey surfaces the data behind this shift, equipping marketing leaders with clarity on how and where to focus.

Events Deliver Real Value at Critical Stages

This isn’t a return to events as usual. It’s a reimagining based on measurable business outcomes.

According to IDC’s 2026 Sponsor Survey of 150 senior marketers across the US, UK, Germany, and Singapore:

  • 67% rank brand awareness as a top priority
  • 53% are focused on generating qualified leads
  • 90%+ say events deliver the most value in mid-to-late funnel stages

Hybrid Takes the Lead and the Budget

The format matters, and hybrid is winning.

When asked which formats they’ll prioritize in 2026:

  • 57% of marketers chose hybrid events as their top format
  • 58% expect their event budgets to increase next year

This reflects a push for flexible, scalable, and inclusive experiences that can drive personalized engagement at scale.

What Performance Looks Like in 2026

To prove impact, marketers are aligning event ROI with funnel-specific metrics:

Top success metrics:

  • Cost per opportunity (67%)
  • Lead quality and conversion (60%)
  • Deal influence in key accounts (43%)

Top challenges:

  • Complex execution (52%)
  • Delivering personalized experiences (42%)

Marketers aren’t just seeking impact,they need proof they can show upstream.

What Marketers Value Most in Event Partnerships

Marketers aren’t just choosing events; they’re choosing strategic ecosystems. The IDC survey reveals a strong alignment between what drives investment and what defines a valuable partner.

What drives investment in third-party events:

  • High-quality lead generation (67%)
  • Credibility through association with analysts or peers (63%)
  • Expansion into new accounts or buying centers (47%)

These motivators point to one thing: marketers want more than visibility; they want validation and velocity. Events must open doors, fast-track trust, and spark meaningful conversations.

What defines the right partner:

  • Price-to-value ratio (84%)
  • High-caliber audience (seniority, budget influence) (69%)
  • Personalization (66%)
  • Fast execution and support (54%)
  • Lead-to-pipeline conversion performance (53%)
  • Custom targeting options (51%)

It’s not just about format or reach. Marketers are choosing partners that combine content credibility with precision targeting. In a complex buying environment, relevance, not just scale, wins.

Together, these findings reflect a clear mandate: outcomes matter. From tailored audience experiences to measurable lead progression, marketers are investing where value is both visible and verifiable.

Insight-Led Content Is the Difference-Maker

The success of an event hinges on relevance. That’s why marketers are doubling down on partners who bring audience precision and analyst-backed content.

  • 91% say independent, analyst-led content is critical to event success
  • Trusted insight builds trust across every stage of engagement before, during, and after the event

Key takeaway: Price-to-value, audience quality, and credible content are top criteria when selecting event partners.

Navigate Your 2026 Strategy With Confidence

Events are no longer standalone experiences, they’re central pillars in a broader B2B growth strategy. When backed by trusted tech intelligence, the right formats, and analyst-led content, events can help your team hit every metric that matters.

Whether you’re optimizing your event calendar or rethinking your demand strategy, IDC’s insights are here to guide your next move.

🗓️ Explore the IDC 2026 Events Calendar
Discover the best opportunities to connect with your audience with data, formats, and partnerships that work.

In Europe’s markets, strategic messaging must prove ROI and stay aligned across strategy, sales, analysts, and country GTM teams. 

Strategic Messaging in Europe’s Markets 

As 2026 planning accelerates, high-performing GTM teams at tech vendors across Europe know that campaigns alone won’t secure growth. They’re stress-testing positioning – not only for internal alignment, but for resonance with buyer expectations, stakeholder dynamics, and budget scrutiny. 

The fundamentals of effective messaging remain constant across regions: clear strategy, ROI proof, and alignment across functions. In Europe, however, an added layer of complexity must be addressed: messaging needs to resonate across fragmented national markets, languages, and governance models while staying consistent for buyers. 

What We’re Seeing from Top-Performing GTM Teams in EMEA 

  1. Building from buyer economics, not brand preference

The strongest value narratives in 2026 are rooted in buyer economics. For European GTM teams, that means anchoring messaging in: 

  • Business outcomes tied to line-of-business KPIs 
  • Time-to-impact metrics that satisfy budget scrutiny 
  • Proof points that link product value to spend categories and investment decisions 

IDC research shows that messaging built around use-case ROI increases renewal likelihood by 3.5x. For GTM teams competing across Europe, this ROI narrative must be credible at headquarters and adaptable in local markets. 

  1. Aligning to who the buyer really is now

Your champion may still sit in IT or product, but the buying committee has expanded. In 2026, procurement, finance, RevOps, and CFOs will shape final evaluations – and their questions go beyond features and functions: 

  • How does this investment impact budget and efficiency? 
  • Where does it fit in the broader vendor stack? 
  • Does it align with compliance and operational resilience goals? 

For European GTM teams, these dynamics don’t change, but multi-country decision-making adds friction. ROI messaging must stay consistent across borders, so what a buyer hears in Paris matches what they hear in Munich or London. 

  1. Checking internal alignment before buyers do

Too often, what strategy wants to say, what sales are saying, and what analysts are reporting don’t fully align. That slows the buyer’s journey or stops it altogether. 

In Europe, the risk of misalignment is multiplied: 

  • A message crafted centrally may not translate effectively in country execution 
  • Analyst commentary may highlight ROI drivers in one market that don’t match what buyers hear locally 
  • Country-level adaptations risk drifting unless anchored in a shared ROI-based strategic framework 

Leading European GTM teams are addressing this by creating aligned narratives validated against external signals. That way, strategy, sales, analysts, and country teams reinforce each other rather than pulling apart. 

Why It Matters for Tech Vendors in Europe

In fragmented markets, the risk isn’t messaging that’s “wrong.” It’s messaging that’s slightly off – between strategy, sales, and analysts, or between headquarters and local GTM teams.

The strongest European GTM teams in 2026 will be those that:

  • Keep strategic alignment as their foundation
  • Prove ROI under budget scrutiny
  • Adapt to country-level nuance without losing consistency

IDC’s role as the Trusted Tech Intelligence provider is to help tech vendors validate and align these narratives — ensuring that what strategy defines, what sales delivers, and what analysts echo are all part of one coherent story across Europe.

Want a deeper checkpoint?

We recently published a new guide “5 Signals Your Messaging Won’t Win in 2026”.  This guide outlines the most common and often hidden signs of misalignment we’re seeing in enterprise GTM efforts right now, along with steps you can take to course-correct using IDC data.

If you have a question about anything, please fill in this form.

 

 

 

 

The IDC European Enterprise Communication and Collaboration Survey 2025 reveals increasing market segmentation in the UC space, as customers demand more choice and flexibility. This underlines the need for UC providers to evaluate their strategies and align more closely with evolving market trends. Below are the key findings from the European survey.

Businesses Demand Greater Choice and Flexibility

Most current UC offerings present binary, mutually exclusive choices that lock customers into a single platform. These options fail to address the full spectrum of business requirements, forcing organizations into trade-offs between critical capabilities such as transparency and control versus scalability and flexibility. As a result, many are unable to achieve their desired outcomes to the fullest extent.

A Resurgence of On-Premises Deployments

Cloud solutions provide scalability and eliminate upfront infrastructure costs, but some organizations are reverting to on-premises models to regain greater control and transparency over their IT environments. Regulatory constraints and geopolitical concerns — including the implications of the US Cloud Act — are driving this shift, particularly in sensitive verticals. However, this choice also involves trade-offs, with transparency and control being prioritized over flexibility. But it is not just reverting back to on-premises UCC – 60% across the board have stated that they will replace their existing solutions.

A New Era of Choice in Deployment Models

As customer demand for flexibility increases, the market is seeing greater segmentation and a shift away from traditional “either/or” approaches. Deployment models no longer need to be substitutes for one another. Instead, they can coexist, with each bringing unique, often irreplaceable value. Applications can now be decoupled from the underlying infrastructure, offering a wider range of hosting options across environments. This represents a market inflection point, where customers have more choice and flexibility to adopt solutions that best meet their needs.

Hybrid Deployments Are Becoming the Standard

Two-thirds of European businesses are already using multiple UC solutions across different deployment models to meet diverse requirements. While this hybrid approach enables organizations to capture the strengths of various models, it also introduces challenges — including higher maintenance costs, operational complexity, and integration issues. In the context of AI-driven automation, this creates opportunities for innovation to simplify hybrid environments and reduce complexity.

Strategic Implications for UC Providers

No single vendor can cover all requirements alone. A clear understanding of customer priorities, combined with close ecosystem collaboration, will be critical as the market continues to evolve. IDC’s European UCC research provides the insights needed to help providers align strategies with shifting customer needs.

If you have a question about anything, please fill in this form. 

As cloud marketplaces continue to grow in scale and influence, they are reshaping how software is bought, sold, and delivered. For independent software vendors (ISVs), cloud platforms, and partners, marketplaces offer a streamlined route to customers, accelerated procurement, and new monetization models. But as this ecosystem matures, a subtle but important issue is emerging: the potential for revenue double-counting across the value chain.

The marketplace revenue flow

In a typical cloud marketplace transaction, a customer may purchase a SaaS or PaaS solution from an ISV via a private offer. That offer might be created by a distributor and fulfilled by a partner, while the ISV itself runs its solution on the same cloud platform that hosts the marketplace. Each party in this chain—partner, distributor, ISV, and cloud provider—may record the full transaction value as revenue or gross merchandise value (GMV), depending on their role and reporting model.

Where overlap occurs

The potential for double-counting arises when the same infrastructure spend is captured in multiple places. For example, an ISV may purchase infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) from a cloud provider to run its application. That same ISV may then sell its solution via the cloud marketplace, where the customer pays for the full SaaS offering—including the embedded IaaS costs. In this scenario, the cloud provider may record both the ISV’s IaaS consumption and the customer’s SaaS purchase as separate revenue streams, even though they are economically linked to the same infrastructure usage.

Estimating the impact

Our latest estimates suggest that up to 10–20% of reported marketplace revenue could be subject to some form of double-counting. This is particularly relevant in complex enterprise deals involving multiple intermediaries and multi-year commitments. The risk of overlap is higher in marketplaces with mature ISV ecosystems and transactional depth, where infrastructure and software are tightly coupled.

Implications for the ecosystem

This dynamic doesn’t imply wrongdoing—each party is legitimately recognizing revenue based on their role in the transaction. However, it does raise questions about how we measure the true size and growth of the cloud economy. Without careful deduplication and end-user-level spend tracking, there is a risk of overstating total IT spend, partner influence, and marketplace adoption.

Why it’s hard to fix

The challenge lies in the complexity of the ecosystem. Each participant has different incentives, reporting standards, and visibility into the transaction flow. Cloud providers may report gross marketplace volume, ISVs may report full contract value, and partners may claim influence or attach credit. Without a standardized framework for revenue attribution, it’s difficult to isolate and remove duplication.

A subtle signal

This isn’t a crisis—but it is a signal. As marketplaces become a larger share of enterprise IT procurement, the need for transparency and consistency will grow. For ISVs and cloud platforms alike, understanding where and how revenue is recognized can help avoid misaligned incentives and ensure sustainable growth. It’s something to be aware of as the ecosystem continues to evolve.

IDC’s EMEA Partnering Ecosystems team helps technology vendors, platforms, and ISVs navigate the evolving dynamics of cloud marketplaces and partner ecosystems.

Through continuous engagement with the ecosystem and proprietary survey data, we provide grounded, real-world insights into how value flows, where overlaps occur, and what it means for your go-to-market strategy. Whether you’re refining partner models, optimizing marketplace presence, or simply seeking clarity in a complex landscape, we can help. Get in touch to access the intelligence you need to make smarter, faster, and more efficient ecosystem decisions. For more information on the research, click here.

Listen to Stuart and Andreas’ webcast “The New Partner Playbook: Ecosystem-Led Growth in EMEA” register here.

If you have a question on this or anything related to partnering, please drop it here.

Stuart Wilson - Senior Research Director, EMEA Partnering Ecosystems - IDC

Analyst Profile
Stuart Wilson is senior research director for IDC’s Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) Partnering Ecosystems program. With over two decades of global experience, Stuart focuses on the rise of complex, connected ecosystems and how platform models are reshaping routes to market and partner engagement frameworks.