Strand Consult has studied global mobile telecom industry for more than 29 years. This year it presents its 25-Year Anniversary Review, highlighting the evolution of the telecom sector and the key developments shaping the industry
At the close of each year, Strand Consult reviews the predictions made for that year, letting readers judge the accuracy for themselves the accuracy. Then it provides forecasts for the coming year with insights for operators, policymakers, and stakeholders worldwide
In 2025, Strand Consult was honored to engage with telecom operators, national leaders, and top academics at more than 50 events across five continents. Strand Consult’s workshops and presentations addressed key themes including security, geopolitics, broadband economics, mergers, spectrum management, and new business models for 5G. This anniversary research note has 12 chapters. It assesses Strand Consult prediction record, Ukraine, spectrum, broadband cost recovery and USF, security risk in Chinese technology, digital sovereignty, 5G public safety networks, satellite networks, the RAN market, and financial expectations for the industry. Strand Consult wishes you and yours a Happy New Year.
What Strand Consult got right in 2025
Don’t judge a fortune teller by the future he predicts, but whether he was right about the past. Strand Consult is not afraid to call out things as they are or highlight telecom operators’ strategic mistakes. In 2025, with a new president in the White House and a war in Ukraine, geopolitics is front and center, and much of what happened over the past year did not surprise Strand Consult or our clients.
Even before Trump returned to the White House, Strand Consult predicted China’s orientation would remain unchanged, prompting foreign companies to shift production and investment elsewhere; while China continues debt-trap diplomacy and sweetheart deals with strings attached. That said, nations prefer to avoid entanglements and pursue trade without coercion. Trade within the democratic world already represents about half of the world’s total, and this can grow without dependence on China.
In 2017, 100 per cent of iPhones were produced in China. Under Trump 1.0, Apple began shifting production to India, which now makes 20 per cent of iPhones. US smartphone shipments assembled in China fell from 61 per cent in Q2 2024 to 25 per cent in Q2 2025, credit to India. According to Canalys, “Made-in-India” smartphones grew 240 per cent year on year and now account for 44 per cent of smartphones imported into the US, up from 13 per cent in Q2 2024. India today produces 20 per cent of the world’s smartphones.
Strand Consult anticipated China’s shift toward greater aggression, now evident in military drills in the Taiwan Strait, intimidation across the East and South China Seas, the harassment of Philippine fishermen, and increasingly dangerous gray-zone encounters with US and allied aircraft. While Beijing presents itself as peaceful and entrepreneurial, it bristles when confronted with its grave human rights abuses in Tibet, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang. The bloom is now off China’s rose: beyond its borders, few take its charm offensive at face value. Having learned from experience, the United States, Europe, and other democracies increasingly assess Chinese technology through a national security lens. As a result, concerns over Chinese equipment are expanding beyond mobile networks and subsea cables to encompass AI systems, data centers, and other forms of critical digital infrastructure. The EU’s Action Plan on Cable Security illustrates measures undertaken in the EU and beyond, showing that just as Western companies face systematic barriers to supply equipment to China, Chinese suppliers will encounter significant restrictions in many countries.
Ukraine and the Elusive Path to Peace
The war in Ukraine has an outsized and underappreciated impact on telecom, consuming political attention and crowding out solutions to Europe’s deeper, unresolved challenges. Realistically, the conflict could conclude in three ways: (1) through negotiations, (2) by providing more military support to Ukraine, or (3) by deploying NATO troops and escalating the war—a last option few would endorse. Neither the EU nor Emmanuel Macron’s five-hour talks with Vladimir Putin in February 2022 succeeded to deliver peace, and likewise, the Biden Administration made little progress before Trump returned to the White House.
When it comes to military aid, the Ukraine Support Tracker from the Kiel Institute provides useful figures. Strand Consult used these figures to analyze military support to Ukraine from the start of the war through August 2025, adjusted for each country’s population. The numbers are stark: Denmark (€1,536 per capita) leads, followed by Norway (€722). Other nations rank lower: Germany (€210), the UK (€197), the USA (€185), France (€89), Italy (€28), and Spain (€16). John Strand discussed this issue at a conference in the US Senate on December 9, attended by several Ukrainian parliamentarians.
Many European countries are quick to offer verbal support for Ukraine but shrink to contribute financially or militarily. Strand Consult explored this issue in its research note “Is there a correlation between European nations’ level of Chinese telecom equipment, the consumption of Russian energy, and military aid to Ukraine?”. France spent more on Russian energy in 2024 than it contributed in military aid to Ukraine during the first three years of the war. In contrast, Denmark, with 5.7 million inhabitants, spent more than the French, which John Strand showed a Spanish Senate conference in June 2025.
One hopes for a swift end to the war, yet its conclusion is likely to leave both Ukraine and Russia dissatisfied, with the harshest critics coming from European countries that have contributed the least. Combatants will return scarred both physically and psychologically, while civilians bear the loss of family members and the destruction of their communities. Supporting these survivors and preserving peace will require immense effort, particularly as Putin’s Russia remains aligned with malign actors such as China, Iran, and North Korea.
The geopolitical reality in 2026 is likely to be strongly influenced by the United States, which is expected to pressure countries to choose sides: the free Western world or totalitarian states such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. After the war, more countries are anticipated to take a clear stance, though some—led by India, Brazil, and South Africa—may attempt to “ride two horses” temporarily. In the long run, India is likely to align with the West, as its modern economy depends on supplying technology to Western markets.
Spectrum Milestones
In 2025, the United States made notable progress on spectrum management. Congress restored the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) auction authority in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), reversing prior limitations, and the Department of War’s misguided veto in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was struck down. This restoration comes not a moment too soon, as fixed wireless access (FWA) is booming, with US operators reaching 14.6 million FWA connections in Q3 2025 and global FWA adoption expected to double to 350 million by 2031. FWA is a game-changer because it allows customers to cut the cord and receive high-speed broadband through the air.
Under the OBBB Act, the FCC must now identify and auction at least 800 MHz of spectrum for commercial use, including 100 MHz of Upper C‑Band (3.98–4.2 GHz) by mid-decade, with the remainder phased in over time. Spectrum auctions are expected to deliver around $85 billion to the US Treasury over time—a pretty penny for the rational allocation of this natural resource. European authorities recognize that modernizing their spectrum rules along the US model—with long-term licenses, flexible use, secondary trading, and other market-based mechanisms—could improve the economics of connectivity. The US approach, where operators buy and hold spectrum in perpetuity, has proven far more effective than Europe’s system. Strand Consult does not anticipate that Europe will overcome its spectrum challenges, as detailed in its note. 10 reasons why EU spectrum harmonisation is a great idea but nearly impossible to implement – Strand Consult
Beyond terrestrial spectrum, satellite systems—particularly Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations—continue to expand. Strand Consult’s recent report “Will LEO Satellite Direct-to-Cellular Networks Make Traditional Mobile Networks Obsolete?” highlights LEO satellites’ growing role in providing broadband services, easing spectrum pressures, and enabling new capabilities for both commercial and public applications.
Holding Big Tech Accountable for Network Costs
2025 saw significant progress in Universal Service Fund (USF) reform and efforts to improve broadband cost recovery in the United States. A pivotal US Supreme Court case confirmed the constitutionality of the Universal Service Fund, clarifying that USF assessments are not taxes but standard regulatory fees used to fund essential services such as Air Traffic Control, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 911 emergency services, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and other critical infrastructure. Building on this momentum, House and Senate Republicans and Democrats are working on permanent reform of universal service.
Meanwhile the Lowering Broadband Cost for Consumers Act continues to gain traction. A bipartisan bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives, and the number of cosponsors continues to grow. Five national trade associations, 48 state association and more than 400 rural broadband providers in the US endorse the legislation. Among policymakers, there is growing support for policies that make broadband infrastructure investment more sustainable while improving affordability for low-income users, reflecting a broader recognition that robust broadband networks are essential to empower people, drive the economy, and end Big Tech’s long-standing free ride.
As Strand Consult has documented based on publicly available information, the largest internet companies Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, and TikTok derived an estimated $200 billion in revenue in 2024 from the 135 million users connecting to the internet through the USF. Through each household connected, Big Tech earned on average $2600 in 2024. Some 5 million businesses in USF-funded areas drove an average of $19,000 per firm to Big Tech in 2024. While Big Tech reaps enormous value from the USF, it contributes little to nothing in return—and expects to extract even more from America’s broadband networks without paying its for it.
The explosion of data centers is poised to exacerbate this free ride if left unaddressed. AWS, Google, Microsoft and Meta build data centers to store their content (photos, videos, messages, documents, databases and telemetry) and to transmit their services and technologies. These data centers drive dramatic growth in internet traffic. By hosting cloud services, streaming platforms, social media, AI applications, and enterprise workloads, these facilities generate vast amounts of data that must be transmitted continuously to end users, businesses, and other networks. Services like video streaming, real-time collaboration, and large-scale AI inference multiply the volume of traffic across broadband and backbone networks. Content replication and caching—meant to improve performance—often results in additional redundant data transfers. The explosion of digital advertising further accelerates traffic, as data centers process not only targeted content delivery and AI-driven personalization but also the massive volumes of ad tech analytics, tracking, and user monitoring that is triggered and rendered through these facilities. The cumulative effect of these operations is that broadband providers must continually expand network capacity but without the ability to raise prices on end users or recover the costs from the traffic generators.
In many instances, end users never request this traffic; it is simply a feature of the technology that generates additional data. Today, advertising and ad tech alone account for more than one-fifth of total US internet traffic.
Requiring the owners of these AI data centers to pay for the traffic costs they impose on broadband networks is necessary but challenging. Indeed, much of the community backlash against data centers stems from the externalities and unrecovered costs generated by hyperscale facilities. If the data center owners paid for their use of broadband networks, energy, and other resources, there would be less public concern. Instead, many hyperscalers actively seek to avoid such payments, using their market power to reduce or evade contributions for the resources they consume. Big Tech advances the argument that AI and ad-encrusted services are so beneficial and valuable that they should be delivered for free and that charging them to access public or private resources somehow violates notions of free enterprise. In practice, these firms leverage their dominance to drive construction, energy consumption, and traffic generation, while forcing broadband providers and their customers (including grandmas in tennis shoes) to bear the costs—a perversion of property rights which underpin Constitutional principles.
Ending the Big Tech + AI free ride on broadband and USF requires holding Big Tech accountable for the costs it imposes. While the ideal solution is for hyperscale data centers to pay directly for the resources they consume, there are pragmatic alternatives if voluntary or market-based approaches fail. Regulators could reclassify data centers or their operators as telecommunications carriers or essential network participants, subjecting them to existing obligations for interconnection and cost recovery. Alternatively, legislative action could establish explicit contribution requirements, creating a statutory framework analogous to the USF, 911, or other infrastructure levies. Without such measures, society continues to subsidize the expansion of digital infrastructure while these firms reap the financial benefits, perpetuating a system in which end users bear costs that should rightly be the responsibility of Big Tech.
Mega‑content deals like Netflix’s roughly $72 billion offer for Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance’s $108.4 billion hostile bid underscore how enormous content platforms will pay huge sums for exclusive property rights while still refusing to compensate downstream broadband providers for network usage. A minimum condition of these deals should be that the content giants contribute to cost recovery and accept a duty to deal with local broadband providers so that the networks powering both traffic and content can recover costs.
The October 2025 AWS outage, when thousands of services worldwide went dark, laid bare a central truth: when hyperscale cloud services fail, society bears the consequences. Strand Consult’s report When Amazon Goes Down, We Pay the Price: How AWS Avoids the Obligations of Critical Infrastructure details how Big Tech profits enormously from others’ networks while avoiding the financial and regulatory obligations needed to ensure resilient, affordable, and sustainable digital infrastructure.
The Caribbean region—made up of US neighbors with limited industrial bases, long histories of free trade with the US, and strong tourism ties—experiences some of the greatest digital injustice in the world: for every $10 monthly mobile subscription, Big Tech generates thrice the profit from the region yet pays no taxes, has no local employees, no offices, no infrastructure investment, and no interest in contributing to the network that makes its profits possible. Local telecom operators, by contrast, are licensed, taxed, employ local people, and invest about 18 per cent of revenue in networks, yet struggle to recover costs. Big Tech’s free riding on Caribbean broadband networks amounts to a form of digital colonialism, extracting some $12 billion annually while leaving sovereign nations to shoulder the cost of connectivity and build the infrastructure needed for economic development. Caribbean policymakers must explore cost‑recovery reforms, to close the region’s broadband investment gap and secure its digital future.
Looking at 2026, these reforms and initiatives will be critical. Ensuring sustainable funding and cost recovery will allow broadband expansion to continue, support new technologies, and prevent free ride price distortions while maintaining affordability for consumers. The combination of legal clarity, bipartisan support, and community awareness sets the stage for continued progress in making broadband both reliable and rationally financed.
Explore Strand Consult’s library on USF reform and broadband cost recovery to see how end Big Tech’s free ride.
Securing networks from high-risk suppliers
There was significant discussion about China in 2025, and the topic will remain prominent in 2026. Opinions vary widely on how to manage risk with China. Strand Consult emphasizes the importance of transparency and disclosure regarding the use of Chinese electronic components, given the risks of intrusion, coercion, surveillance, subversion, and espionage associated with the Chinese government and military, whether through formal or informal practices. Strand Consult sees as a critical duty, as its clients—telecommunications providers worldwide—build and maintain the foundation of the digital society. Telecommunications infrastructure functions as a horizontal platform linking the vertical solutions that provide society’s essential services, with an overarching “cloud” that collects and stores the data produced daily. These companies must understand how geopolitical realities affect their business, as Strand Consult laid out in its research note a year ago. Eight Risks for the 5G Supply Chain from Suppliers Under the Influence of Adversarial Countries Like China.
Government leaders and policymakers worldwide—including from the Philippines, Spain, El Salvador, the United States, and others—invited Strand Consult to discuss this and related research in 2025.
China’s approach to foreign nations seeking to secure infrastructure and enforce the law is revealing. Canadian Michael Kovrig, for example, recounted on CBC his 1,019 days in Chinese captivity following Canada’s arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on charges of selling sensitive equipment to Iran through a Huawei affiliate. Strand Consult provides a detailed account in The Story Behind the Huawei Story.
Late in 2025, suspicious drone incidents disrupted airports in Belgium, Oslo, and Copenhagen. The drone detection systems supplied by China’s DJI Aeroscope in Oslo and Copenhagen was down at that time. The trustworthiness and resilience of this critical infrastructure will receive heightened attention, particularly given concerns about relying on China for such solutions. Policymakers may look to Ukraine for lessons on building resilience under conflict and pressure.
Project Lion Cage exposed the egregious data collection practices of Chinese electric vehicles, including Yutong buses. Privacy, data protection, cross-border integrity, and other concerns remain unresolved with Chinese services, particularly TikTok even with a promised change of ownership. Child safety issues, which TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew acknowledged in sworn testimony to the US Congress, also remain outstanding. These concerns will continue into 2026. A key question is whether, under the new ownership, US TikTok users can access TikTok content outside US and vice versa.
China is already feeling the impact of US sanctions limiting access to sub-7nm chip production equipment. Huawei’s AI data center highlights these constraints, with analyst Richard Windsor noting in Huawei vs. Nvidia – No Contest that Nvidia is 32 times more efficient than Huawei. While much of today’s technology originates from China, it depends heavily on Western contributions. These sanctions could limit Chinese companies’ ability to develop and deliver advanced solutions using 2nm and 3nm chip technology.
In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz delayed a decision on implementing the EU’s 5G toolbox, later announcing that German networks will ban Chinese equipment from 6G (Bloomberg). 5G will likely remain in use until 2050 when Merz is 95 years old, meaning that the systemic risk of Chinese equipment will live for decades. By contrast CEO of Deutsche Telekom, Chairman of T-Mobile US, and supervisory board member at Mercedes-Benz Group, Tim Höttges defended the use of Chinese equipment in critical infrastructure in a LinkedIn post, emphasizing that future technology leadership—not just cost—will dominate in the coming decade and questioned whether engagement or protectionism is the right approach. An unofficial translation reads, “Our debates at the moment are all about the USA: tariffs, Trump, protectionism…”… “But the next ten years will not only be dominated by the fact that China is a cheap supplier, but because it is a technology leader. . .We must ask ourselves how we deal with this situation. Do we want to learn and benefit from the Chinese? Do we want to trade with the Chinese? Or do we want to close the borders in a protectionist fashion?”
His stance reflects probably Mercedes-Benz’s commercial interests in China and suggests that commercial relations may outweigh national security concerns, reminiscent of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s role in approving Russian gas in Germany, which he took as Chairman of NordStream 2 in 2016, an action which subsequently destabilized European security and energy prices.
The EU is expected to update the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) around January 15, 2026 restricting high-risk suppliers’ access to critical infrastructure (CIRCABC). The next proposal for the EU’s Digital Markets Act will likely clarify limits on Chinese equipment use in critical infrastructure and prevent EU financing for such equipment. Political pressure on China and its equipment in critical infrastructure will increase as mobile operators begin providing solutions for NATO communications, first responders, and other critical services.
Digital sovereignty: Beyond Rhetoric
The European Union drove digital sovereignty as a key policy in 2025 with debate on Europe’s reliance on American technology and the market power of US technology companies. While a legitimate and necessary discussion, it is often incomplete and selectively framed.
Europe has in fact some global technology champions. The Dutch ASML dominates the market for advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment; Germany’s SAP is the world’s leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider; and Sweden’s Spotify, now 19 years old, ranks as Europe’s top internet startup (Booking.com, founded in 1996 in Amsterdam, was acquired by Priceline in 2005). That said, Europe has struggled to scale new technology companies and sustain innovation at the same pace as the US and China.
The US depends on European technology in certain domains. Semiconductor manufacture is critically dependent on ASML. SAP supplies ERP systems to approximately 85 per cent of Fortune 500 companies, meaning a substantial share of American industry cannot operate its production, logistics, or financial systems without European software. In mobile network infrastructure, Ericsson and Nokia provide essential patents and equipment.
Europe often overlooks its own strategic dependencies on China. Major European telecom operators—including Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom (DT)—rely extensively on Huawei equipment. DT’s networks are largely Huawei: 58 per cent in Germany, 100 per cent in Greece, 50 per cent in Croatia, 100 per cent in Austria, 70 per cent in Poland, and 100 per cent in the Czech Republic. In addition, its T-Systems resells cloud solutions built and run by Huawei.
Strand Consult maintains that digital sovereignty must be grounded in resilience, transparency, and realistic risk assessment and that European leaders acknowledge geopolitical reality: The United States remains Europe’s indispensable ally; without US leadership and support, NATO would cease to be credible, and Europe would lack effective self-defense.
Finally, Europe leaders must acknowledge the frightening telecom dependency on China—a state aligned with authoritarian regimes such as Russia, North Korea, and Iran. China’s model of digital sovereignty is exclusionary: its restricts infrastructure equipment to domestic providers and excludes foreign technology providers, a policy that has blocked thousands of foreign firms since 1996, as documented in Strand Consult’s report You Are Not Welcome.
A credible digital sovereignty strategy must therefore be consistent, reciprocal, and aligned with Europe’s security and democratic values—not driven by hypocritical narratives or political convenience.
5G Networks: From Commerce to Critical Infrastructure
Since the launch of 3G, mobile operators have repeatedly argued that each new generation of technology would unlock higher revenues. The historical record shows the opposite. Despite 25 years of rapid digitalization, operators have captured only a marginal share of the value created. At the launch of 3G, European ARPU was as high as €36. Many daydreamed ARPU would double; Strand Consult did not. As Strand Consult predicted, ARPU declined. This remains the industry’s structural reality.
In 2025, Strand Consult conducted extensive analysis of how military actors, including NATO, use—and increasingly rely on—mobile infrastructure. Mapping of Chinese network infrastructure in Europe reveals significant challenges for NATO in accessing telecommunications based on trusted vendors. NATO won’t rely on Chinese equipment for communications, just as it won’t procure Chinese fighter aircraft.
Across NATO countries, one quarter of 4G/5G RAN infrastructure originates from China. Germany has the highest exposure, followed by Turkey, Italy, Poland, and Spain. Together, these five countries account for 65 per cent of NATO’s Chinese network exposure, with Germany alone representing about 25 per cent.
Beyond 5G—and especially 5G standalone—2026 is expected to mark a turning point in how mobile networks assume communication functions currently handled by dedicated systems. Secure telecommunications for first responders will become a central policy issue. Historically, defense and public safety networks were built in silos. Today, 5G standards are more robust, secure, and advanced, enabling authorities to integrate critical capabilities on top of commercial enterprise and industrial networks. Some countries are layering 5G onto existing TETRA networks used by police and fire services, while others are evaluating a full transition to mobile-only solutions.
The United States offers a relevant model. In 2017, AT&T received a 25-year contract, 20 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum (Band 14), and a one-time subsidy of US$ $7 billion to build and operate FirstNet. Today, FirstNet serves approximately 8 million users with critical communication needs. Importantly, AT&T does not hold exclusivity: Verizon competes with Frontline, and T-Mobile launched T-Priority in 2025. In 2026, FirstNet’s business model and competitive dynamics will likely be increasingly scrutinized.
Beyond defense and emergency services, attention in 2026 will increasingly focused on additional public-private communication solutions delivered over commercial mobile infrastructure. Nordic nations have demonstrated leadership.
Norway provides a leading example. In 2025, the regulator Nkom entered a strategic partnership with Telenor, Telia, and Lyse Tele to develop and test a new national emergency network, scheduled for launch in 2031. The system will be built on commercial mobile networks to deliver robust communications for first responders.
That same year, Oslo’s metro operator “Sporveien”, in cooperation with Telia, implemented what is claimed to be Europe’s first metro control system operating over a mobile network. Norway is also testing 5G-based remote control of the Candela P-12 electric hydrofoil between Frosta and Trondheim. At NTNU, a 5G solution has been developed to transmit HD and 4K video from multiple cameras to shore, enabling real-time prioritization of critical data and supporting autonomous maritime operations.
Strand Consult expects 2026 to be a pivotal year for advanced public-private communication partnerships. In this context, digital sovereignty and network resilience will be decisive. Operators that have invested heavily in Chinese infrastructure are likely to face increasing difficulty meeting the security and resilience requirements imposed by national authorities.
High Rates, Higher Stakes: Telecom Investment 2026
In its predictions for 2025, Strand Consult focused on how rising interest rates affect the telecom sector’s ability to invest in infrastructure. Higher capital costs raise investors’ required returns, creating greater pressure on highly indebted operators struggling to generate profits compared with those with lower debt and stronger cash flow.
Strand Consult described TDC’s structural separation split in Denmark into Nuuday (services) and TDC Net (network) as financial acrobatics. Earnings were shifted to the network company, which commands a higher valuation multiple than the service business. Assessing the move by the results of the four owners—ATP, PFA, PKA, and Macquarie—reveals the consequences. Despite dividends paid in 2019, the total return for the three pension funds from 2018 to 2023 was just DKK 57 million, or 1 per cent. Strand Consult had identified this risk in advance, noting that TDC held a dominant position in a market of overcapitalized competitors that had heavily invested in fiber.
Macquarie seeks Danish state approval to acquire the 50 per cent of TDC still owned by ATP, PFA, and PKA—stocks likely to trade at a substantial discount compared with their 2018 purchase price.
Looking ahead, Strand Consult expects 2026 to remain a year of financial turbulence. Smaller operators and those in emerging markets are likely to face the greatest challenges, potentially constraining their ability to invest in the digital infrastructure that underpins modern society.
2026 RAN Trends: Consolidation, Competition, and Chinese Influence
The mobile Radio Access Network (RAN) market attracts significant attention, yet despite its global value—estimated at 34 billion EUR—is divided across Europe (17%), the US (25%), China (36%), and the rest of the world. The key players Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, and a few smaller providers, with Samsung leading among them. While RAN is critical to society, its growth remains modest compared with the expanding market for cloud-based storage.
Many had hoped that smaller players leveraging OpenRAN could challenge the established suppliers. Historical trends, however, show extensive market consolidation. Strand Consult has followed this market for years and has consistently questioned the ability of smaller players to establish a credible alternative.
In 2025, these predictions proved accurate: OpenRAN players’ market share declined again, highlighting major operators’ reluctance to increase network complexity. The OpenRAN equipment being deployed consists primarily of single-vendor solutions from Ericsson and Nokia, rather than smaller players, notes Light Reading. Strand Consult expects this trend to continue into 2026. The firm also predicts that Chinese suppliers will maintain their market share by using aggressive pricing in markets where they are still welcome. In practical terms, creative solutions and financing models will be Huawei’s and ZTE’s most important tools in a number of markets, particularly in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Satellite Industry – The Race Intensifies
In 2023, Strand Consult likened Jeff Bezos’ Kuiper as the burger bar boutique alternative to an interstellar McDonald’s. Satellite industry developments proved this assessment accurate, and the comparison holds even when including Eutelsat’s OneWeb. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Starlink SpaceX and Starlink lead the satellite market as cost and innovation leaders, with rapid development outpacing competitors; next-generation satellites are slated for spring 2026, followed by an upgraded mobile experience in fall 2026. For more information check out Strand Consult’s report “Will LEO Satellite Direct-to-Cellular Networks Make Traditional Mobile Networks Obsolete?”
AI: Who is the smartest kid on the block?
AI received even greater attention in 2025, with the focus shifting from general-purpose platforms like ChatGPT to vertical AI solutions tailored for specific industries, including law, consulting, and healthcare. Companies are increasingly using AI as a tool on par with traditional office software, centralizing knowledge into AI systems where employees can retrieve both raw information and AI-processed insights from the corporate “library.”
2025 was marked not only by media fascination with AI capabilities but also by cautionary stories about misuse, cheating, and errors arising from uncritical reliance on AI. While AI is a powerful tool, it remains in the early stages of its life cycle, with much of its potential yet to be realized.
The foundation of AI growth is the global expansion of data centers. 2025 was a record year for data center construction, driven by hyperscalers such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and AWS, along with Chinese players including Huawei. By some estimates, the US has roughly 5,400 data centers, with thousands more in development; the state of Virginia alone surpasses the EU in capacity, says PitchBook. According to S&P Global, including acquisitions, mergers, divestments, and investments, the value of data center deals in 2025 reached $61 billion, a 10 per cent increase from 2024. Since 2019, deals in the US and Canada have totaled $160 billion, in Asia-Pacific nearly $40 billion, and in Europe $24.2 billion, indicating that US companies drive much of this investment.
Europe’s role in AI continues to shrink. The region accounts for only 6 per cent of global AI venture funding and 5 per cent of AI computing. In contrast, the United States is aggressively expanding its AI capacity. In 2025, the Trump administration established TechForce.gov, employing 1,000 AI experts for two-year terms to advise public-sector AI deployment, with salaries ranging from $150,000 to $200,000 plus benefits.
By 2026, use cases for AI are expected to expand dramatically as companies seek to optimize business processes. European tech firms are likely to focus on building applications on top of US-based AI platforms, while China continues to deploy a broad range of AI applications globally. Solutions like DeepSeek have received attention, but over 150 Chinese AI products are marketed outside China, and this number is expected to rise in 2026. Consumers will likely struggle to distinguish whether AI solutions—and their data—originate from the US, Europe, or China.
China faces challenges in accessing cutting-edge chip technology, as documented by the US House Select Committee, but Chinese companies increasingly seek workarounds. For example, some purchase access to foreign telecom companies’ data centers with advanced chips in exchange for those companies buying telecom infrastructure from Huawei or ZTE. By 2026, attention will intensify on those facilitating China’s circumvention of US export restrictions on advanced technology. Effectively, this strategy allows China to train its AI models using top-tier US technology outside China.
While some commentators speak of AI bubbles, Strand Consult frames the situation as an arms race. Companies with access to the latest technology and the greatest computational capacity can gain commercial advantage. Europe’s participation in this race has been limited over the first few years, but the evolution of the market in 2026 will reveal whether the region can close the gap.
Wrap-Up: Reflecting on 2025 and Looking Ahead to 2026
In 2025, President Trump dominated global political and economic discourse, and with 37 months remaining in office, his presidency will likely continue to shape the geopolitical landscape. The war in Ukraine continues, slowing EU region’s response to the economic challenges highlighted in the Draghi report. Europe’s current struggles affect not only the continent itself but also its ability to engage effectively with the wider world. For instance, after 26 years of negotiation, the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement—which would create a massive trade bloc covering 722 million people and reduce duties on over 91 per cent of goods—remains unrealized in 2025.
Global supply chains are shifting as companies move production out of China or closer to end markets. This redistribution of economic activity highlights how some countries will likely seize new opportunities.
Amid these global shifts, the telecommunications industry remains central by building and running the critical infrastructure underpinning modern society and navigating fierce competition even in consolidated markets. In Denmark, for example, fixed broadband subscriptions are declining by 5 per cent annually as customers migrate to mobile solutions. The industry also faces broader global challenges, including recovering cost for growing Big Tech traffic (increasing with AI), managing global financial and geopolitical challenges, and regional issues like spectrum pricing and asymmetric regulation. The Caribbean illustrates how these challenges converge in a single region.
In 2025, Strand Consult published numerous research notes and reports, featured expert guest contributors on its guest blog, and saw its analysis cited in over 1,000 news stories worldwide. Strand Consult’s work reaches all continents, and its readership continues to grow. For 25 years, Strand Consult has issued annual predictions, and our historical record demonstrates consistent accuracy.
Moving toward 2026, the global landscape remains dynamic. Technological, political, and economic shifts continue to create both challenges and opportunities. In this environment, transparency, translation, and foresight remain more critical than ever for companies and policymakers navigating a rapidly changing world.
