Telcos need new skill sets to enable their organisations to compete and add value like technology companies. Insights from our Future skills tracker tool show that telcos remain behind techcos in the penetration of key role types and provide direction on the expert capabilities required to become more innovative, agile and technology-driven overall.

Building internal capabilities

Following our inaugural Future skills tracker report published in March 2024, this report compares the workforce structures of a sample of telcos and technology companies as of March 2025 to determine the penetration of roles with key ‘future skill’ expertise. The data for this report can be explored in our Future skills tracker tool.

Many telcos have ambitions to be more like technology companies (techcos): customer-centric, innovative, efficient and agile. Techcos leverage software, data, artificial intelligence, automation and cloud to this end.

This telco aspiration requires not only new technology/tools – but also new expertise and roles. STL Partners has identified nine key skills (‘future skills’) for a successful telco-to-techco transition:

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI and ML)
• Automation
• Cloud
• Cybersecurity
• Data analytics
• Innovation
• Network
• Software
• User experience (UX)

The sample for comparison in our tool – and this report – includes 19 telcos and 9 techcos.

Telcos: BT Group, Vodafone, Elisa, Deutsche Telekom, STC, KPN, Verizon, Telstra, Telenor Group, Orange, Singtel, Bell Canada, Spark New Zealand, Telefónica, Swisscom, Telus, T-Mobile US, Turkcell, AT&T

Techcos: Apple, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, IBM, Rakuten

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Scope and limitations

All graphs in the report are based on data from our Future skills tracker which relies on LinkedIn profiles. We do not account for workers that are not on the platform and assume that skill categories are equally affected. The data in our tracker may skew towards LinkedIn profiles in English.

Table of contents

• Recommendations for telcos
• Executive summary
• Future skills trends
• Skill-specific insights
• Top telcos’ recent focus on skills

Related research

• Future Skills Tracker
• Future Skills Tracker report
• MWC 2025: A tech show, not a telecom one
• The path to telco growth: STL Partners’ manifesto

Author

Nicola Warren

Senior Analyst

Nicola Warren is a senior analyst, leading the Transformation Leadership research service at STL Partners.