Mobile World Congress 2026: A Preview by John Strand, Strand Consult
For the past 24 years, Strand Consult has published previews and post-views of the Mobile World Congress (MWC). MWC began 39 years ago in Brussel, later ending in Cannes 1996 as a small conference, where attendees would gather at the Hotel Majestic bar after each day’s events. By 2025 MWC had 109,000 attendees. This year feels different.
2025 marked the 20th anniversary of MWC being held in Barcelona. When the decision was made to move the event from Cannes, I served on the advisory board that evaluated the competing bids. Barcelona presented a stronger overall offer than Copenhagen and Amsterdam and proved capable of accommodating the significant growth that followed in the years ahead.
This year’s host is GSMA’s new Director General Vivek Badrinath, a French executive of Indian origin. He succeeds Mats Granryd (2024 salary: $2,758,458). Badrinath brings broad experience from Vantage Towers—part of the Vodafone (Vodacom Group) one of its few consistently successful businesses—as well as from Vodafone’s challenging operations in India. Earlier, he spent several years at Orange, focusing primarily on technology implementation and marketing. He seems well suited to help guide a GSMA that faces the need for reinvention.
MWC is a living organism. What began as a gathering where mobile operators measured success in subscribers and revenue has evolved into a global stage for companies delivering services over the top of telecom networks—celebrating those building on the so-called “dumb pipe.”
MWC values consensus and continuity, but today’s structural challenges cannot be managed through stagecraft alone. Conspicuously missing from the program is the most strategically consequential 5G opportunity—the integration of commercial networks into defense and critical infrastructure. Profitability, cost recovery, and monetization must move to the center of the debate.
2026 will likely be remembered as a watershed year, marking a clear “before and after” for the industry: networks designed in a pre-AI era and those reshaped for a post-AI reality. With the rise of AI, not only telecom operators but businesses across sectors face a paradigm shift whose consequences will redefine the competitive landscape.
MWC 2026: The Polished Playbook
Like CES and Davos, MWC follows a proven formula. The strength is execution. The weakness is predictability. So why go? Because even the most polished and predictable conferences create moments that cannot be scripted. You might meet someone you would not otherwise encounter. You might hear an idea that reframes your thinking. One conversation, one unexpected insight, can prove critical.
That is the paradox of global gatherings: the format may be established, but the outcomes are not. This year’s program follows the same framework used for years:
- A giant exhibition with more than 2,900 companies represented.
- 11 keynote presentations.
- Addresses from telecom CEOs regardless of their record on value creation or innovation.
- A lineup of globally trending themes—this year dominated by AI and satellites.
- Well-known tech companies.
- Recognizable personalities.
- A handful of promising new entrants
- And, of course, AI sprinkled everywhere.
The event is carefully packaged to avoid controversy and political friction. While many presentations are interesting, the framing is polished, and important debates are kept offstage.
That said, MWC 2026 may prove to be one of the most interesting editions in years. For those willing to think critically, there is likely to be significant insight from Barcelona.
The event is structured to avoid critical questions. The core investor concerns—capital discipline, returns, and profitability—are rarely addressed directly. The event is carefully packaged to minimize controversy and political friction. Many presentations are interesting, but the framing is polished and the harder debates stay offstage. I’m ready for AI-generated PowerPoints—slick in presentation, but often thin on verifiable substance.
That said, MWC 2026 could prove interesting, even if just edge cases. For those willing to listen critically, meaningful insights can emerge
The telecom CEOs take the stage first…..
MWC opens, as it often does, with telecom CEOs setting the narrative. This year, however, the organization itself has new leadership. In “Leading the Future: Intelligent, Inclusive, Unstoppable” Badrinath will likely stress the industry’s scale and societal importance before returning to the familiar pledge to “unlock the full potential of 5G.” Since 3G, every new “G” has carried the same promise—yet most value has accrued to those building services on top of the networks, not to the operators themselves.
Gopal Vittal of Bharti Airtel is expected to outline how India consolidated its market and built nationwide 5G at record speed. This feat surpasses Europe and was done without Chinese equipment. India has delivered the advanced, secure, and reliable 5G mobile networks European policymakers are still dreaming about.
Orange CEO Christel Heydemann will likely promote the European Edge Continuum, developed with Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, TIM, and Vodafone, positioning it as a sovereign European solution for edge deployment. The caveat: much of the underlying infrastructure remains Chinese.
Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle has continued divesting national units: Hungary, Spain, Italy, and soon the Netherlands—while promising to “unlock the full potential of 5G” and prepare for what comes next. The Edge narrative will likely feature prominently.
AT&T CEO John Stankey will likely emphasize 5G, fiber, AI-driven cost reductions, and copper shutdowns. A more compelling topic would be FirstNet—8 million first responders with an ARPU of about $40 per month—a model Europe could replicate as it phases out TETRA. Another interesting topic is the failed $85.4 billion Time Warner acquisition—and the lessons learned—but that is unlikely to be on the agenda.
Expect China Telecom COO Guiqing Liu to use an AI-generated presentation and to repeat the message that China leads AI globally, what he shared at the AI for Good event in Geneva last year. Less likely is mention of China’s sub-7nm chip constraints and limited access to advanced NVIDIA processors, which raise the cost of AI development and infrastructure in China.
In short, the keynote will be polished and engaging—but focused more on how others monetize the networks than on how operators themselves capture the value.
11 Keynotes — Five Worth Your Time
MWC features 11 keynote sessions this year. Beyond the opening address, five stand out as particularly worth attending—either in person or online.
Keynote 2: “Transforming Tomorrow’s Connected World.” The session focuses on the expanding scope of connectivity—from core networks to cloud platforms to emerging capabilities that extend beyond our planet. In plain language, it examines how cloud and satellite markets will reshape the industry.
I look forward to hearing SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell and SVP Michael Nicolls of SpaceX and Starlink—leaders who have built solutions light years ahead of their competitors. Starlink’s growth is striking. It had 4 million customers in September 2024 and is likely to report roughly 11 million by MWC—served by approximately 9,800 satellites, about 70 percent of those currently in orbit, across 155 countries. Revenue has surged to $12 billion in just a few years.
By comparison, French Eutelsat reported €1,244 million ($1,467 million) in total revenue in 2024/25, with just €187 million ($220 million) coming from LEO (OneWeb). My observation in 2023 that Elon Musk operates and interstellar McDonald’s franchise while his competitors run burger bars—seems generous. Starlink´s competitors are hot dog stands.
Starlink’s roadmap is ambitious. In USA, it already delivers direct-to-device (D2D) service using 10 MHz of paired spectrum on T-Mobile’s PCS G-block (1910–1915/1990–1995 MHz). Now, with the planned $17 billion acquisition of EchoStar’s AWS-4 and AWS-3 spectrum, Starlink aims to scale its direct-to-cell, 5G-enabled capabilities, deploying up to 15,000 next-generation D2D satellites from 2027. Strand Consult examines this in its report, Will LEO Satellite Direct-to-Cellular Networks Make Traditional Mobile Networks Obsolete?
Rakuten founder and CEO Mickey Mikitani will likely argue that his cloud-native OpenRAN model has produced a more efficient mobile operator than the incumbents. Expect a reprise of Rakuten’s previous CEO Tareq Amin 2022 MWC pitch—this time with a heavy dose of AI.
will likely address the challenges Kyivstar faces in Ukraine and how they continue to manage operations under wartime conditions. The war in Ukraine has posed far greater challenges for mobile operators than many imagine. The in the occupied parts of Ukraine is today serving the Russian tropes.
VEON Group CEO Kaan Terzioglu will likely address the challenges Kyivstar faces in Ukraine and how the company continues to operate under wartime conditions. The war has posed far greater challenges for mobile operators than many outside the sector appreciate. Meanwhile Chinese-built mobile networks in the occupied parts of Ukraine are now serving Russian troops.
BT Group CEO Allison Kirkby will likely spotlight BT’s transformation, highlighting the milestone of 25 million premises passed with fiber by year-end. Yet the company still carries significant copper exposure and faces intense fiber competition across the UK. Investors should not expect a firm timeline for the return of revenue growth. For now, BT remains fundamentally a cost-reduction story—an effort Kirkby is executing with discipline.
AI. Satellites. Cloud. Endless excitement. The hard part—turning it into mobile operator revenue—remains largely unanswered.
Satellites can connect directly to smartphones — without a dedicated satellite dish or special handset. Called direct to device (D2D) satellite connectivity, it eliminates dead zones, improves disaster resilience, and creates constructive communications backup and redundancy. The customers of United Kingdom’s O2 customers can add a device to device (D2D) supplement for GB £3 ($4) per month. How many will actually sign up and actually pay? That number matters. That is the number that matters.
Keynote 3, “The Politics of Connectivity: Governing in a Fragmented World”, posits connectivity which sits at the center of political decision-making. As digital infrastructure becomes increasingly vital to modern society, it attracts growing political scrutiny. While the telecommunications industry has long considered itself heavily regulated, the new reality is more complex. Operators must now navigate layered regulation—sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting—across jurisdictions. The challenge is no longer just compliance, but integration, harmonization, and strategic navigation of expanding rulebooks. This extends beyond privacy and network security and increasingly shapes standards development and global technology governance.
Featuring GSMA Chief Regulatory Officer John Giusti, ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, and OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann, the keynote will likely reflect on future directions. Some foresee rising geopolitical tensions leading to bifurcated telecommunications standards—one sphere shaped by China and another by allied democracies. Others emphasize the economic headwinds: global slowdowns, persistent connectivity gaps, and the reality that one-third of the world’s population remains offline–not only because minimum ARPU levels cannot justify 5G investment, but also because existing commercial models often struggle to ensure cost recovery. After five years of litigation, a German court confirmed that Meta breached its interconnection contract and owes compensation to Deutsche Telekom—underscoring how platforms can extract more value from networks than the operators themselves.
This is a critically important debate. However, informed by the history of the GSM standard, Strand Consult is not convinced that bifurcation is inevitable. On September 7, 1987, the GSM vision was launched when operators from 13 countries signed a memorandum of understanding in Copenhagen. In total, 15 representatives participated: France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and two independent operators—Cellnet and Racal-Vodafone. At the time, multiple mobile technologies were competing to become the leading standard. However, the cooperation at the infrastructure layer created global shared advantage. Today, the industry operates largely on a unified platform that grew from that moment. History suggests that markets, scale, and economics tend to drive convergence rather than fragmentation.
The GSM story is not a blueprint for every new initiative. Core network equipment is a modest market relative to the digital value chains it enables, leaving little economic logic for duplicating global standards. OpenRAN illustrates the point: it accounts for less than 5% of new sales and has seen declining market share over the past two years. In any event WRC27 to be held in Shanghai, China will test whether fragmentation thesis is realistic.
Keynote 4, What Does Strategic Tech Sovereignty Mean for Europe, should test whether sovereignty is a genuine strategy or merely an attractive illusion—and where rhetoric diverges from infrastructure reality. Many European operators still rely heavily on Chinese equipment. Germany did not fully implement the EU’s 5G Toolbox, and the European Commission has responded with the Cybersecurity Act. A relatively small group of operators accounts for most of Europe’s high-risk exposure. Without competitive products, cost parity, and trusted supply chains, sovereignty remains more aspiration than execution.
GSMA Director General Badrinath will navigate this debate carefully. He is expected to remain diplomatically neutral—keeping constructive relations with the United States, Europe, and China, the latter a significant financial contributor to the GSMA.
European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen will likely outline the EU’s initiatives to stimulate a market for European technology, including the proposed Digital Networks Act and the expanded Cybersecurity Act, which now covers 18 industries, telecommunications being only one. The ambition is clear: reduce dependency and strengthen European resilience.
Eutelsat CEO Jean-François Fallacher will almost certainly argue that Europe needs a sovereign alternative to Starlink. It is a compelling political vision. Yet, as Fallacher himself recently acknowledged, such an alternative must match Starlink on price and performance. The comparison is stark: Starlink operates more than 9,700 satellites and generated approximately $12 billion in revenue last year. Eutelsat operates 634 satellites, and its OneWeb LEO business reported €187 million ($220 million) in revenue in 2024/25. The gap is significant. The LEO market resembles a “winner-takes-most” structure.
He is unlikely mention Eutelsat’s continued continued exposure to Russia. Since assuming leadership, the company has stopped disclosing the specific share of revenue derived from Russia, including satellite television services that have reportedly reached roughly 15 million Russian households. Four years after the invasion of Ukraine, we estimate that approximately 5 percent (€60) of Eutelsat’s turnover may still be linked to the Russian market. It also took nearly two years for EU-sanctioned Russian TV channels to be fully removed from its platform. Such realities complicate broader arguments about European digital sovereignty.
Timotheus Höttges CEO of Deutsche Telekom, Chairman of T-Mobile US, and supervisory board member at Mercedes-Benz Group will speak about tech sovereignty and the European cloud ambitions of T-Systems, its enterprise and IT services division. What is less likely to be highlighted is that one of T-Systems cloud solutions are build by Huawei. Höttges defended engagement with China, arguing that technological leadership—not simply cost—will define the coming decade and questioning whether protectionism is the right response. His position reflects the commercial exposure of German industry, including Mercedes-Benz, and echoes earlier political decisions—such as Germany’s dependence on Russian gas—that carried strategic consequences.
Telefónica Chairman and CEO Marc Murtra will likely promote the European Edge Continuum initiative developed with Deutsche Telekom, TIM, and Vodafone, presenting it as a sovereign European edge platform. Whether sovereignty can be achieved without full supply-chain independence remains the underlying question.
Keynote 6, Architects of the AI Age, attempts to explore how the AI we build today will shape technology, society, and humanity tomorrow. Advanced chip architectures, global networks, hyperscale data centers, and generative coding represent the next frontier of the digital economy.
Predictions about AI range from utopia to catastrophe, yet few—if any—truly know the outcome. It may simply be too early to tell. The effects are likely to diverge, benefiting some sectors while disrupting others, creating gains in one area and losses in another. If AI were a football match, we are not even one minute into the game. While many claim to understand how AI is reshaping society, we remain far from grasping its full implications. Its long-term impact may rival—or even exceed—the transformative power of the steam engine, the computer, and the mobile phone.
The promising remarks of Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm are likely to posit that Qualcomm’s extensive IP portfolio gives it a central role in the mobile ecosystem. Its strategic focus on on-device and hybrid AI reflects a belief that computing power can increasingly shift from centralized data centers to the smartphones in our hands—reducing latency, improving privacy, and distributing intelligence across the network.
Huawei’s Chaobin Yang will undoubtedly present Huawei as a leader in AI, though downplaying trade restrictions and concerns China’s semiconductor constraints. China’s 7nm multi-patterning process is becoming less competitive as TSMC and Samsung advance to more sophisticated nodes.
Separately Dr. Richard Windsor explains that China’s reliance on multi-patterning at 7nm is the reason Huawei’s 2026 AI product represent a step backward from 2025 and helps explain the widening performance gap with Nvidia. Achieving comparable compute output would require Huawei to deploy roughly 11 times more cabinets, consume nine times more power, and incur more than three times the capital expenditure—while also facing higher operating costs, despite lower electricity prices in China. With compute economics estimated at around $10 billion per gigawatt, Nvidia is only marginally viable, whereas a Huawei-based data center would, in his view, destroy most of the invested capital over a ten-year period. On that basis, the commercial choice becomes difficult to justify.
Michael Weening, CEO of Calix, serving the US broadband industry, and University of Southern California research professor of the social implications of AI, Kate Crawford, will add their perspectives to the discussion. Understanding AI’s future requires more knowledge than any one person can absorb. Yet human judgment still matters. The human ability to interpret, contextualize, and question may remain as important as the machines themselves.
Keynote 11 Rewriting the Playbook focuses on AI’s reinvention of professional services and the rise of new forms of digital companionship and entertainment. It promises to explore how ambitious concepts evolve into operational systems.
The 45-year-old Bret Taylor, Chairman of OpenAI and CEO of Sierra is called the “Forrest Gump of the Internet” industry for his presence in key events and companies in the last two decades, as well as making himself a billionaire by rebooting customer service with AI. He will likely discuss how specialized AI agents can perform defined tasks, automate routine work, and free human labour for higher-value activities.
Singtel CEO Ng Tian Chong will offer a telecom perspective, outlining how AI reshapes operations and service delivery—and how operators might embed AI across networks and customer interfaces.
Expect a polished presentation illustrating AI-driven infrastructure evolution from NTT President and CEO Akira Shimada under the rubric “Photonics Unlocks an Intelligent Power-Optimised Future.” Mobile operations represent only a small part of NTT’s business; it has already transformed into the world’s eighth-largest global IT services company—larger than IBM and Capgemini.
Karandeep Anand, CEO of Character.AI will likely emphasize how AI-powered conversational agents generate customized, human-like interactions to reduce the time and cost currently devoted to traditional customer service functions.
While we recognize the level of AI hype, these panelists have led real transformations and delivered meaningful revenue growth. That alone makes the session worth attention. The real test will be whether their presentations—AI-assisted or not—offer substantive insights and actionable takeaways, rather than polished narratives built for the stage.
GSMA Ministerial Programme
Held once again behind closed doors, Ministerial Programme offers policymakers a “safe space” for candid exchange. The rationale is understandable: when placed on a public stage, discussions can quickly devolve into polished, AI-generated platitudes rather than genuine reflection.
Yet the industry now faces structural questions—cost recovery, deregulation, consolidation, and long-term economic sustainability—that require broader and more transparent engagement. At a time when policymakers rightly demand increased transparency from firms, particularly digital platforms and algorithm-driven services, it is reasonable to ask whether similar standards should apply to public authorities.
Practical constraints may exist, but there is a strong case for greater openness, including livestreaming or publishing substantive summaries, as is common in national parliaments and other public forums. A review of the three-day agenda suggests a format largely unchanged from previous years, with several sessions closely aligned to themes already covered in the public keynotes. The real opportunity would be to bring the more difficult conversations—currently confined to private rooms—into constructive, structured public debate.
The Tech Sovereignty Trade-Off will likely feature German representatives and Deutsche Telekom advocating for “European digital independence”. Attendees should ask why the largest operator in the EU’s largest economy has gets a pass on fully implementing the EU’s 5G Toolbox. Germany’s Strategic Dependence did not begin with telecom—it began with Russian gas. Today, Germany is exposed across infrastructures for telecom, rail, solar energy, and cloud systems that rely on Chinese suppliers. Sovereignty cannot be selectively applied. If security standards are serious, they must apply equally to all operators—especially the largest and most influential ones.
AI’s Energy Bill addresses the immense power consumption of AI data centers. Ironically, Europe’s relative weakness in AI investment—accounting for roughly 6% of global AI venture funding and 5% of global AI compute—means the energy challenge is less severe in the EU than in the United States, which hosts around half of the world’s data centers and is actively grappling with grid and financing implications. As noted in “Big Tech’s Electricity Bill Is a Problem. Why the “Pay Your Way” Principle Should Apply to Broadband and Data Centers”, Strand Consult examines this developing issue and proposed solutions such as hyperscalers “paying their own way”, ratepayer protection pledges, and the implications for broadband cost recovery.
Ask the Regulator – LEO Satellite Policies is more complex than it appears. As Strand Consult outlines in its report “Will LEO Satellite Direct-to-Cellular Networks Make Traditional Mobile Networks Obsolete?”, LEO systems can destabilize smaller telecom markets. In some countries, LEO is not complementary to terrestrial infrastructure—it can undermine the financial viability of some operators.
Europe’s DNA Test will address the European Union’s proposed Digital Networks Act (DNA). The proposal is supposed to represent the generational turning point for Europe’s ailing telecom industry, correcting decades of regulatory missteps. While elements of the proposal—such as spectrum harmonization and updates to interconnection and cost recovery—are welcome, it likely does not go far enough to modernize outdated telecom rules and to greenlight in-country consolidation, the single most impactful financial objective for the industry. Notably, the GSMA has achieved only limited progress for European operators on this front.
Overall, the Ministerial Programme looks and feels carefully curated and clinically cleansed. Tech sovereignty is discussed, but the uncomfortable realities—operator reliance on high-risk suppliers and uneven implementation of the EU’s 5G Toolbox—are largely absent. These gaps are precisely why the EU advanced the Cybersecurity Act to strengthen ICT supply-chain security across 18 critical sectors, including telecommunications.
Despite an ongoing war in Ukraine and accelerating defense rearmament across Europe, there is little discussion about how regulatory frameworks must evolve as military and first-responder communications increasingly depend on commercial 5G networks. This is not a marginal issue—it is central to Europe’s security architecture.
The DNA diagnoses a structural crisis but prescribes modest adjustments. It treats a house fire with a garden hose.
A deeper structural problem persists across the regulatory landscape: too many policymakers lack a fundamental understanding of how the telecommunications sector actually works. Consolidation is routinely opposed on ideological grounds, despite the capital intensity and scale required to fund spectrum, fiber, and 5G modernization—the stated goals of policymakers. Strand Consult highlighted this disconnect in Denmark, where the office of Ministry for Digitalization under Caroline Stage Olsen spent more on coffee than on connectivity—an anecdote showing misplaced priorities. The issue is not coffee; it is competence. When policy is shaped by ideology rather than industrial economics, the result is weaker investment, slower innovation, and ultimately harm to consumers and Europe’s competitiveness. Educating policymakers should be GSMA’s first job. That gap in understanding continues to shape policy outcomes.
It is not a programme that matches the level of seriousness we encounter when Strand Consult is invited to brief politicians and regulators around the world. In those settings, the discussion operates at a higher level—without sugarcoating, without scripted platitudes, and without avoiding the difficult questions that ultimately determine investment, security, and competitiveness.
Defense & First Responders —The Revenue Opportunity GSMA Won’t Discuss
The largest underexplored growth opportunity for mobile operators lies in using 5G as the backbone for first responders, military communications, and critical infrastructure. The model already exists: the U.S. FirstNet serves 8 million users with a $40 ARPU; Norway is migrating 150,000 emergency users to 5G; the UK is advancing its Emergency Services Network; and Nordic countries are pioneering cross-border 5G military slicing. This is real, monetizable revenue. But discussing it requires confronting uncomfortable realities—trusted versus untrusted vendors, high-risk suppliers, and Europe’s exposure to Chinese equipment. That makes it politically inconvenient.
For two decades, operators have chased new revenue streams, encouraged by MWC presentations projecting hockey-stick growth that never materialized. In 2026, however, the GSMA could highlight a genuine turning point: mobile networks beginning to assume communication functions long handled by dedicated systems. Secure connectivity for first responders is emerging as a central policy issue. Where defense and public safety networks were once built in silos, modern 5G standards are now robust and secure enough to support critical capabilities on commercial enterprise infrastructure. Some countries are layering 5G onto existing TETRA systems, while others are evaluating a full transition to mobile-based solutions.
The wall between civilian and defense networks is collapsing. Militaries are no longer building bespoke, siloed systems—they are procuring best-in-class commercial solutions and integrating them into their operational architecture. Commercial devices are meeting military standards. Germany’s security authority just approved iPhone and iPad for NATO-classified communications. This approval allows them to handle classified information up to the NATO Restricted level without special software or configuration—a level of certification no other consumer mobile device has achieved.
Moreover, the business model is already proven. In the United States, AT&T’s FirstNet—backed by 20 MHz of prime spectrum and $7 billion in public funding—serves 8 million first responders at roughly $40 ARPU. Importantly, AT&T does not hold exclusivity: Verizon competes with Frontline, and T-Mobile launched T-Priority in 2025.
Norway is migrating 150,000 emergency users from a state-owned TETRA network to commercial 5G by 2031. The Nordic countries are running cross-border 5G military slicing across vast territories. Defense ministries are no longer building isolated systems—they are buying capacity from commercial operators. Norwegian Armed Forces buy capacity from Telenor and ICE, combining the mobile and fixed network expertise with Finland’s Altibox and Nokia.
In the UK, the Home Office is leading a cross-government programme to deliver the new Emergency Services Network (ESN) will replace the government’s public safety solution Airwave. ESN will enable fast, safe and secure voice, video and data across the 4G network, giving first responders immediate access to life-saving data, images and information in live situations and emergencies on the frontline.
Defense budgets are rising to 3.5% of GDP across NATO. An additional 1.5% may go toward resilience and critical infrastructure. This is not theoretical. It is funded demand.
But here is the uncomfortable truth: secure 5G requires trusted infrastructure. Of roughly 100 EU mobile networks, 60 are using trusted suppliers, about 30 still rely heavily—between 35% and 100% of their RAN—on high-risk suppliers. Approximately one quarter of NATO’s 4G/5G infrastructure originates from China, with Germany carrying the largest exposure. A handful of countries and three major operators account for most of the risk. The EU has recognized this since 2023.
China is not a neutral supplier. It supports Russia’s war economy. It has delivered telecom infrastructure to occupied parts of Ukraine and Crimea. It aligns strategically with Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang. Secure NATO communications cannot coexist indefinitely with untrusted core infrastructure.
If MWC 2026 truly explored the defense and first-responder opportunity, it would confront this reality: operators using high-risk vendors will be structurally excluded from the most strategic and profitable segments of future communications. That conversation is politically explosive—and commercially inconvenient for an event heavily funded by the very vendors at issue.
The revenue opportunity is real. So is the security divide. The industry can no longer pretend the two are separate.
Check out Strand Consult’s extensive reports and research notes on how to ensure that defense and first-responder systems have access to secure, modern communications infrastructure.
AI Profits at the Top, Network Costs at the Bottom
The companies capturing the bulk of AI profits—Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Apple Google, TSMC, and OpenAI—have largely leveraged infrastructure built and financed by telecom operators. Nvidia dominates AI compute; Microsoft, Amazon, and Google monetize AI through hyperscale cloud; Meta, Google and Apple embed AI into consumer ecosystems; TSMC manufactures the chips; IBM and Palantir monetize enterprise AI; OpenAI drives model-based subscriptions. The value capture sits at the top of the stack—while the cost of the underlying networks remains at the bottom.
AI hyperscaling is accelerating traffic growth across broadband networks. In the United States alone, mobile data traffic grew roughly 35% last year. Consumers did not explicitly demand “AI acceleration,” yet they experience it indirectly—through higher-resolution video, auto-play content, generative features embedded in apps, and increasingly dense advertising and ad-tech delivery. A significant share of incremental traffic is driven not by essential communications, but by commercial content and algorithmic engagement loops. Even at a sustained 20% annual traffic growth rate, networks must effectively double capacity every three to five years. Meanwhile, mobile ARPU in most markets remains flat or declining. The structural imbalance is clear: traffic scales exponentially, investment requirements rise accordingly, but operator revenue per user does not.
Telecom remains the only major infrastructure sector where the largest traffic generators contribute little to nothing directly to mobile network investment. Yet that dynamic is already changing in energy and electric grids: hyperscalers increasingly “pay their own way,” whether through direct grid investment or building dedicated power capacity.
Across virtually every infrastructure sector, cost recovery follows a clear principle: heavy users pay proportionally for the capacity they consume or trigger. Payment networks charge merchants per transaction. Electric grids bill per kWh plus peak demand. Data centers require hyperscalers to reserve and pay for capacity. Roads use fuel taxes and tolls tied to weight and distance. Airports charge landing fees based on aircraft weight and passenger volume. Railways impose track-access fees based on usage. Water systems meter consumption. Internet backbone providers sell capacity in Mbps or Gbps contracts. CDNs charge by gigabytes delivered.
The logic is consistent: usage, capacity, and system strain determine payment.
Mobile broadband networks are the exception. The largest traffic generators—AI platforms, hyperscalers, ad-tech ecosystems—do not directly contribute to last-mile network investment. End users effectively finance the system alone, even as traffic scales exponentially. In every other infrastructure model, large-scale usage triggers proportional funding. In broadband, it does not.
Two-sided market models matter. South Korea recognized this more than two decades ago and remains a global connectivity leader in part for the network usage fee regime. In rural America, each household generates roughly $2,600 annually for the top eight internet brands—yet those firms contribute essentially zero to the underlying networks or to universal service program which fund affordability and infrastructure for the disadvantaged. Across more than two dozen Caribbean nations, major tech platforms operate without data centers, employees, tax presence, or regulatory registration, while extracting more than $12 billion annually from markets facing a significant gigabit investment gap. GSMA has only cautiously engaged this debate on this global challenge. Strand Consult runs an international research project examining these asymmetries and their implications for infrastructure policy.
The Remaining Value of Human Knowledge
MWC 2026 may prove to be a turning point. The industry is only one minute into the game of a consequential technological shift. Many presentations at this year’s event will likely be AI-assisted—sometimes created by individuals who do not fully understand the material displayed on their own slides.
AI now collects, processes, and structures information at scale. It automates much of the analytical “scutwork” traditionally assigned to junior staff in consulting firms, law offices, media organizations, and telecom operators. Historically, large consulting firms built their margins on a pyramid model: senior expertise at the top, supported by lower-cost staff producing reports and PowerPoints billed at premium rates. AI compresses that model.
For firms like McKinsey, AI is both competitor and accelerator. Strand Consult regularly receives requests from McKinsey employees seeking to use its proprietary research, often accompanied by the following standard text:
“Dear Strand Consult,
“Could you confirm that you agree with the following: McKinsey may use the content internally and incorporate insubstantial portions of the content into client deliverables, with proper attribution to the content provider. The content provider has the right to provide such content. Vendor will not refer to McKinsey as a customer or client, or for any advertising, promotional or other commercial purpose. The term ‘insubstantial portions’ is meant to track general copyright law principles of fair use, and generally we can say that it means a portion that has no independent commercial value.”
Strand Consult believes that leading consultancies should produce proprietary analysis rather than rely primarily on synthesizing external research. Considering the scale of consulting fees paid by European operators and their persistent performance challenges, the industry deserves a candid assessment of the value delivered.
AI is a powerful tool for aggregating and repackaging knowledge. It is reshaping industries built on information processing. Universities are already confronting the consequences as students outsource intellectual labor to machines, raising questions about what academic credentials truly represent. Degrees earned before the AI era may come to signify something different—work more clearly rooted in independent human inquiry.
Journalism faces similar strain. Output expectations are rising, with more articles produced in less time and often with thinner original sourcing. The result is greater volume, but not necessarily greater insight.
For telecom operators, AI is delivering operational efficiencies, reducing headcount in customer service and administrative functions and, over time, potentially strengthening network resilience. But the central economic question persists: who captures the value—those who build and finance infrastructure, or those who monetize services layered on top?
MWC 2026 will showcase AI’s promise across processes and services. Near-term gains will likely come from efficiency; service-layer transformation will take longer. Attention is also shifting toward satellites, where market dynamics increasingly resemble a winner-takes-most structure. The key question is whether any competitor has the scale, capital discipline, and cost structure to challenge Starlink’s cost leadership.
What remains striking is how often geopolitics is filtered out of the main stage narrative. Telecom now sits at the intersection of national security, industrial policy, and strategic competition. Infrastructure is no longer neutral.
MWC 2026 will inspire and generate headlines. Beneath the polished presentations, however, lies a harder reality: the telecom industry is entering a structural transformation—not only in technology, but in economics, power, and knowledge itself. The paradigm is shifting, and with it the balance of value across the digital ecosystem.
Meet Strand Consult at Mobile World Congress
MWC 2026 will dazzle. The question is whether it will deliver for mobile operators. Meet us in Barcelona to cut through the noise.
For nearly three decades, Strand Consult has examined how policy decisions affect mobile operators and their shareholders. Our focus is simple: strengthen the business case for networks through sound spectrum policy, rational consolidation, viable infrastructure models, and smarter regulation.
With a global team of multidisciplinary experts, we help operators navigate an industry shaped by geopolitics, technology shifts, and regulatory complexity. We do not aim to please. We aim to tell the truth.
