Taken in isolation, investment in 5G has thus far failed to deliver on its promises – both technically and commercially. In this combined market forecast for edge computing, private networks and telecom APIs until 2030, we identify how telcos can leverage all their assets to help deliver on the original ambitions of 5G.
It was no surprise that AI dominated MWC this year. But there were lots of other notable trends on the rise – including cybersecurity and data centres – and some that were disappointingly overlooked. Find out what the STL Partners team saw and missed at MWC 2025.
New technologies have made innovation in the network imperative for telcos’ survival. But the focus and scope of innovation varies by the type of company telcos aim to become.
Case studies of telcos adopting infraco, servco, or telecom techco models, how they achieved this, and what lessons can be learnt.
To avoid becoming pure utilities, telcos must evolve their core businesses into more efficient and flexible infracos. But if they also want to accelerate growth and capture the full value of their network investments, they should strive towards building services businesses and becoming telecom techcos. We explore different pathways leading operators are taking to get there.
STL Partners’ Research team present their observations from and analysis of the biggest mobile industry event of the year. There was a lot of buzz around AI and API but behind the tech jargon, we saw evidence that our industry continues to morph to become more open and customer-focused.
Legacy billing systems were built for legacy telco services and are too inflexible to deliver next-generation services. We explore how operators can modernise to unlock key benefits such as cost reduction, accelerated time to market and enhanced customer experience.
Telcos are getting moving with cloud-native. We have asked executives at seven such telcos about the process and what it has meant for their organisations, skills requirements and ways of working.
Gen AI has great potential usefulness to telcos, provided its capabilities and limitations are well understood, and projects implemented judiciously. This report directs telcos to the most promising use cases.
Telcos and policymakers need new metrics to power evidence-based decisions. New tools and data sources can help build greater understanding and transparency in telecoms.
We examine four ecosystem business frameworks to see how they might look when applied to the emerging network API opportunity to assess whether these sorts of models can unlock commercialisation possibilities in uncertain markets.
NaaS is a major new opportunity enabled by telco cloud. But what is it? How can it be delivered and monetised? And how might it drive transformation across the whole industry?
As connectivity becomes ever more integral to enterprises’ operations, network APIs have emerged as a highly anticipated means for telcos to monetise their 5G investments while meeting customer needs. How big is the opportunity, and what commercial models will work?
This is part 3 of a 3-part series taking an in-depth look at how 5G pioneers have evolved their approaches to commercialisation since launch, navigating a maze of factors such as handset availability, technology immaturity and more. What should others take from their experience to date?
With iPhone sales apparently peaking, Apple is looking to double its revenue from services over the next four years to approximately US$50 billion, taking it deeper into adjacent markets, such as entertainment, financial services and communications. However, Apple trails behind Google in developing artificial intelligence and needs to extend the reach of its services to capture more behavioural data. If Apple decides to decouple more of its key services from its hardware, that would have major ramifications for Google, Amazon, Facebook and many of the world’s leading telcos.
To find new revenues, some telcos are competing head-on with the major internet players in the digital communications, content and commerce markets. Although telcos’ track record in digital services is poor, some are gaining traction. AT&T, Axiata, Reliance Jio and Turkcell are each pursuing very different digital services strategies, and we believe these potentially disruptive moves offer valuable lessons for other telcos and their partners.
The rapid growth of Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat and other Internet-based services has prompted some commentators to write off telcos in the consumer communications market. But many mobile operators retain surprisingly large voice and messaging businesses and still have several strategic options. Indeed, there is much telcos can learn from the leading Internet players’ evolving communications propositions and their attempts to integrate them into broad commerce and content platforms. In this report we examine what opportunities still exist for telcos in this strategically important sector.