Konecta Analyst Day, Madrid, May 28, 2025 — Konecta invited industry analysts to the 20th annual ExpoContact, a company-organized event that welcomed more than 1,000 industry leaders, including clients, technology partners and organizations that are looking to improve competitiveness by modernizing customer management. In the morning, Konecta held a special in-person and virtual event for industry analysts in which Konecta executives, clients and technology partners discussed in detail the company’s vision, digital portfolio, and generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI approach. TBR attended Konecta’s first analyst day event and was impressed by not only the openness of the company and its willingness to communicate with the analyst community but also the closeness of its relationships with partners and clients.

Konecta’s vision and ambition are to become the trusted technology, data and operations partner for clients’ agentic AI transformations

During the event, Konecta CEO Nourdine Bihmane shared details about Katalyst 2028, the company’s three-year plan to become a technology, data and operations partner. Essentially, the company’s goal is to provide AI-driven hybrid customer experience solutions (CX) that combine human expertise with advanced AI and digital capabilities. The plan includes four steps: 1) accelerating the adoption of data, GenAI and agentic AI; 2) increasing digital growth; 3) strengthening the partnership ecosystem; and 4) expanding global reach. The company raised €150 million (or $176 million) to fund the transformation plan. Konecta’s goal is to increase revenue to €2.5 billion (or $2.9 billion) by 2028 and generate between 30% and 40% of total revenue from AI and digital services.

To achieve these targets, the company is training more than 7,100 people on role-specific GenAI technologies and offering proprietary GenAI solutions. Konecta is also launching a new global Digital Business unit with digital offerings and 2,500 employees, including more than 300 trained sales leads. Konecta’s digital services revenue was €150 million (or $176 million) in 2024, and the company plans to increase revenue in the segment to €250 million (or $293 million) in 2027, representing a CAGR of 20%.

Expanding its partnership ecosystem will serve as a lever for future growth, such as by establishing strategic partnerships around GenAI with Google Cloud and Uniphore, and with STC Group in the Gulf Region around GenAI-powered CX solutions. Konecta’s partner ecosystem combines technology leaders, such as hyperscalers, cybersecurity providers, GenAI and large language model (LLM) vendors, hyperautomation and service platform solutions providers, and consulting companies to enable coinnovation and codevelopment with clients.

Notably, Konecta’s open ecosystem has been designed on joint IP, shared outcomes and scalable transformation models. Partnerships among IT services providers and technology vendors are a leading lever for portfolio expansion, and Konecta is moving in a similar direction alongside multiple IT services providers. According to TBR’s 1Q25 IT Services Vendor Benchmark, “The roles of alliance partners are changing in the rapidly evolving professional services market. During the past several years, multiple professional services companies took a technology-agnostic approach to offer flexibility to buyers that were wary of vendor lock-in.

As macroeconomic pressures force buyers to examine their existing technology stacks to ensure they maximize ROI, these buyers are consolidating vendors, compelling professional services companies to develop a preferred, if not exclusive, list of alliance partners. … Vendors are leveraging partners to launch agentic AI offerings to automate tasks and drive operational efficiency, and GenAI offerings to boost productivity and create cost efficiency, encouraging adoption by solving clients’ particular business challenges. NVIDIA-enabled agentic AI solutions dominated alliance announcements during the quarter, including new joint offerings with Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant, IBM and Wipro.”

Konecta plans to expand by establishing a sales organization that is structured for global reach and local engagement. Notably, the company is opening new delivery centers in Bengaluru, India, and Cairo and is establishing five new AI Global Competence Centers, located in India, Egypt, Spain, Colombia and the U.S., to diversify service delivery capabilities and expand client reach. Such activities will help Konecta improve its global revenue distribution, as presently the company’s revenue is generated mainly from Europe and Latin America, while English-speaking markets and the U.S. contribute approximately 4% of total annual revenue, though the company plans to increase this figure in the coming years. In January Konecta established Egypt as its regional headquarters to serve clients in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas and announced the opening of a global delivery center and global Center of Excellence (CoE) for GenAI in Cairo.

The company is investing $100 million over the next three years and is planning to hire approximately 3,000 people with digital and technical skills to provide AI solutions, digital transformation, cybersecurity, big data and analytics, IoT, technical support, and multilingual customer services in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Konecta is also partnering with the Information Technology Industry Development Agency in Egypt to provide training and upskilling programs for local people, creating future employment opportunities for skilled talent. Konecta’s partnership with Uniphore, announced in November 2024, to deliver industry-specialized AI solutions that enhance CX with hyperpersonalized interactions will augment Konecta’s client reach in the U.S. and U.K. and contribute to revenue expansion in English-speaking markets.

Konecta provides experience services and digital solutions around service design, technology implementation and process optimization

Headquartered in Madrid, Konecta is provider of transformative experiences and an expert in CX solutions enabled by AI. Konecta has approximately €2 billion (or $2.3 billion) in annual revenue, 120,000 employees across 26 countries and 5,000 digital experts, and supports more than 30 languages. The company offers customer and employee experience services, digital marketing offerings, and products and solutions, such as around CX automation and analytics, all underpinned by AI and GenAI services and advisory and consulting services. Konecta expanded in size and client reach during 2022 through the merger with Comdata, an Italy-based BPO services provider. Comdata had 50,000 employees and annual revenue of approximately €980 million (or $1.15 billion) generated from services such as customer care, back-office and credit management. Since mid-2023 the merged companies have operated under the Konecta brand and currently serv more than 500 blue chip clients. The clients are spread across Europe, Latin America, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia and have an average client tenure of more than 20 years, underscoring Konecta’s emphasis on long-term relationships.

Utilizing a renewed management team will be a critical lever for successful execution of the Katalyst 2028 plan. Notably, over the past several months, Konecta has attracted experienced executives with strong technology and industry expertise from its France-based peer Atos, which has been challenged by attrition due to a turbulent and prolonged transformation initiative. Bihmane, who took the position of Konecta’s CEO in April 2024, previously worked at Atos for more than 23 years, including as global CEO and head of Atos’ Tech Foundations business line. In March Adil Tahiri was appointed head of Advisory and Professional Services. Previously, Tahiri’s 21-year tenure at Atos included roles as advisor to Atos’ CEO and head of CTO. Oscar Verge, also a long-term Atos leader with 20 years of experience at the company, joined Konecta in October 2024 as chief Ai deployment officer.

Konecta is shifting from providing simple automation to orchestration, and AI is a core enabler

While according to Tahiri, “Agentic AI is in the nascent phase,” Konecta’s ambition is to actively transform the industry and create differentiation through digital services. Konecta attracts clients by offering intelligent business orchestration, applying new levels of creativity, such as through real-time and context-aware hyperpersonalized experiences across channels, and orchestrating human and specialized agent interactions. The company provides clients with robust execution through composable agentic platforms and strategic technology and business advisory capabilities to guide clients through their transformations and speed up time to value.

As clients typically have a multitude of business applications, and each has its own data repository, the proliferation of agents creates complexities. Konecta is moving from simple automation to orchestration, and agentic AI adapts to dynamic application landscapes and automatically understands, reasons and sets code to extract data and support decision making. Investing in orchestration capabilities, and development of IP, such as solution accelerators and methodologies and specialized talent enables Konecta to address clients’ needs around managing their agentic AI environments.

Shifting from utilizing industry LLMs to employing customer-specific LLMs enables Konecta to generate business value from customer-specific data. Delivering high-performing and personalized agentic AI based on real-time, proprietary customer data and workflows enables Konecta to benefit from contextual data intelligence and establish trust with clients. The complexity of digital transformation is pushing Konecta to establish a strategic partner ecosystem, including foundational AI providers and niche domain experts, that is complementary to the company’s expertise.

Egypt is an attractive location for IT services providers

Konecta’s expansion in Egypt is driven by the availability of talent with language skills and technical capabilities and will support the company’s global revenue diversification. However, IT services providers such as Accenture, Capgemini, Atos, IBM and Deloitte are utilizing Egypt for global service delivery, are planning to expand their resources in the country, and are actively working with government bodies and local educational organizations to develop in-demand skills to support future recruitment. Intensified recruitment interest from IT services  providers might challenge Konecta’s expansion activities in the country. For example, in April Capgemini announced it will open an AI CoE in Cairo to enable GenAI and agentic AI adoption for clients globally. The center will consist of data scientists, architects, product engineers and project managers. Capgemini plans to double its headcount in Egypt to approximately 1,200 professionals in digital transformation and innovation by the end of 2025 and to expand to 3,000 people through 2026.

Offering GenAI and agentic AI solutions in an open platform increases Konecta’s value proposition

Konecta provides clients with an industrialized, modular and complete GenAI stack that comprises three solutions — Insights for strategic CX intelligence; Co-pilot for real-time agent augmentation; and Auto-pilot for seamless, AI-driven engagement. The Insights solution converts customer interactions into actionable intelligence, automatically mines 100% of voice and chat logs, correlates to KPIs and identifies agent-level coaching insights to forecast outcomes. Co-pilot provides agents with contextual AI to uplift conversations; summarizes prior interaction and customer context; and provides intent recognition, nudges and compliance suggestions during calls. Auto-pilot enables conversational automation of activities and provides escalation to human agents for exceptions. Offering GenAI And agentic AI capabilities in the Konecta platform, which is based on open and modular technology stacks, and offering the solutions as an extension not a replacement of human-delivered services improves the company’s value proposition around deriving productivity gains and expands its client reach.

Investing in GenAI-enabled solutions creates growth opportunities for Konecta, given ongoing buyer interest in adopting GenAI solutions. According to TBR’s November 2024 Digital Transformation: Voice of the Customer Research, “GenAI continues to influence digital transformation (DT) budgets as buyers grapple with juggling hype, ROI and FOMO (fear of missing out). With over three-quarters of respondents combined allocating 26% or more of their DT budgets to GenAI two years after the technology came on the market, it is evident that buyers are eager to explore the possibilities the technology can bring. We do not expect this trend will slow down anytime soon given that the majority of respondents plan to increase their GenAI spend by 10% or more in the next year.”

As macroeconomic pressures force buyers to examine their existing technology stacks to ensure they get the most ROI, Konecta’s GenAI stack demonstrates material outcomes for clients. For example, the Insights solution increases revenue conversion by up to 20% and decreases the ramp-up time for new agents by 20%. The Co-pilot solution enables 98% accuracy in all European languages and a decrease of 30% to 50% in average handling time in managing email and written communication. The Auto-pilot solution automates around 50% of inbound contacts on voice and written channels and reduces cost of interaction by 30%. Demonstrating ROI is critical for solution adoption.

According to TBR’s 1Q25 Digital Transformation: Analytics Professional Services Benchmark, “Enterprises are juggling fear, hype and hope surrounding the potential impact of generative AI (GenAI) on their operating models. This has heightened their expectations for vendors to deliver timely ROI tied to ongoing business process and/or IT modernization transformation, as the implications of technology complexities extend beyond data science, thus creating opportunities for vendors that can manage broad organizational relationships.”

In conclusion

According to TBR’s 2Q25 Accenture Earnings Response, “Transforming the CX domain will remain low-hanging fruit for the next two to three years, offering companies a clear path to apply agentic AI systems for productivity gains. This presents Accenture with a blank canvas to showcase its capabilities at scale and strengthen its position among chief marketing officer buyers. As CX evolves into experience operating systems, powered by continuous feedback and contextual inference, Accenture will need to consider applying multidomain context integration in an era when hyperpersonalization has become table stakes, at least from a communications standpoint.”


Konecta is moving in the right direction, and strict execution of its strategic initiatives and investments in platform-based services will enable the company to reach its revenue growth target of €2.5 billion (or $2.9 billion) by 2028. While Konecta’s competitors are making similar investments, the company will succeed due to its emphasis on helping clients reimagine operations, experience and outcomes with AI, platforms and human creativity, and established local client reach and best-shored service delivery model.

U.S. wireless operators added more than 51 million new wireless phone connections from 2018 to 2024. Where did they come from?

According to company-reported data, industry data, U.S. government data and TBR estimates, U.S. wireless operators collectively added more than 51 million wireless phone connections (prepaid and postpaid) from the beginning of 2018 through the end of 2024, a relatively large number considering the organic population growth rate in the U.S. has slowed significantly over the past two decades as Americans have fewer children and since most people in the country already have at least one wireless phone.

A portion of this increase in phone connections can be explained by situations where one person has multiple lines, such as through work (e.g., business line or first responder line) or by long-tail situations, such as younger and older people subscribing to wireless phone plans for the first time, as well as the net change from births and deaths in the overall population.

However, based on TBR’s research, this only accounts for approximately 56% of total wireless phone net additions during this time frame. Where did the rest of these phone connections come from?

Approximately 44% of wireless phone connection net additions in the U.S. from 2018 to 2024 were from immigrants (legal and illegal)

According to TBR’s research, these 51 million new phone connections fall into four main categories, as outlined in Figure 1.

As shown in figures 1 and 2, immigration (both legal and illegal*) was the largest driver of wireless phone net additions for U.S. operators from 2018 to 2024, accounting for an estimated 22.3 million net additions, or nearly 44% of total wireless phone net additions during this seven-year time frame.

This number makes sense considering that, according to official government statistics such as from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), more than 30 million immigrants (legal and illegal) entered and stayed in the U.S. between 2018 and 2024. Of this number, it is reasonable to assume around three-quarters of these immigrants obtained cellphone service (prepaid or postpaid).

One of the first things immigrants do when they enter the country (legally or illegally) with the intention of staying is to purchase wireless phones and wireless phone service. Most people who enter the country are of an age that they would use phones.

This significant influx of new population into the U.S. drove a secular growth trend for wireless phone connection additions for the wireless industry from 2018 to 2024, and immigration represented the largest driver of wireless phone connection additions for U.S. wireless operators.

However, now that immigration policy is fundamentally changing under the Trump administration, this tailwind has become a headwind for operators and will require a structural reassessment of growth prospects for the industry.

TBR expects this growth shock will begin to present itself in operators’ 2Q25 results, with the effects more clearly seen in 2H25 results.

*Legal immigration primarily includes green card holders, visa holders (e.g., H-1B for temporary works; F1 and J1 for international students) and refugees/asylum seekers. Illegal immigration primarily reflects CBP encounters (all borders), “gotaways” and visa overstays.

Why will there be a growth shock for wireless phone net adds in the U.S. in 2025?

Given this growth slowdown, U.S. wireless operators face a conundrum. How will they continue showing robust net phone additions every quarter? There is no easy solution, but in the last section of this report TBR outlines some tactics operators are employing, or might employ in the future, to mitigate the negative immigration-related effects on their earnings results.

Since the start of President Trump’s second term, there has been a reduction of more than 80% in the flow of illegal immigrants into the country, and legal immigration into the U.S. has also declined significantly. Additionally, there are other population headwinds at play:

• Deportations of immigrants currently residing in the U.S. are ramping up (U.S. government agencies are on pace for over 500,000 deportations in calendar year 2025, up from over 271,000 in 2024)
• Emigration has increased as more people are choosing to leave the country voluntarily.
• Slowing birth rate
• Increase in death rate as the baby boomer generation ages

If we use a conservative estimate and assume a 50% reduction in the number of total new immigrants entering the U.S. from 2025 onward (and if other variables stay constant), this implies a reduction of more than 20% in the total level of new wireless phone connections, a significant challenge for wireless operators since phone connections are operators’ most lucrative offering. Even a 20% reduction in total wireless phone net additions would have a significant impact on operators’ revenue, margins and cash flow.

It is incorrect to assume immigrants only use prepaid plans

Despite claims by the U.S. wireless industry that immigrants predominately use prepaid phone service, the reality is that total prepaid phone connections declined by nearly 5 million in aggregate from 2018 to 2024 while postpaid phone net additions exceeded 56 million in the same period. Given that more than 30 million immigrants are estimated to have entered and stayed in the U.S. during that seven-year period (according to official U.S. government statistics from agencies such as CBP and DHS), it is unreasonable to assume that such a large influx of the population was absorbed by the prepaid market. Rather, it must have been mostly absorbed by the postpaid market.

What U.S. telcos are not saying but Canadian telcos are

U.S. wireless operators have been asked by Wall Street analysts on quarterly earnings calls and at investment conferences about the potential effects of immigration policy changes on their phone connection metrics. Thus far, operators have unanimously downplayed any impact. However, given immigration levels have plummeted since January 2025 (illegal border crossings are down 80% to 90% year-to-year) and voluntary and involuntary deportations are ramping up, there must be at least some impact.

Given immigration has represented approximately 44% of total phone net additions from 2018 to 2024, assuming legal and illegal immigration levels are down a conservative 50% compared to the past seven years, this would imply a reduction of more than 20% in the level of phone net additions moving forward, essentially taking the seven-year annual average of 7.3 million industrywide wireless phone net additions down to an annual average of 5.8 million moving forward. This reduction in new phone additions (which is operators’ most lucrative connection type from an average revenue per user [ARPU] and margin perspective) implies a growth shock, which would force operators to lower revenue and earnings projections. It is possible that operators expect most or all of any reduction in the immigration aspect of their phone connection dynamics could be mitigated by growth in other phone connection types, but history suggests that is unlikely.

The minimal wireless phone connection net addition impact observed in U.S. wireless operators’ financial results in 4Q24 and 1Q25 is likely due to the following reasons:

• Lag time between when someone enters the country and obtains a phone and phone plan and when that result is reflected in U.S. wireless operators’ earnings reports
• The timing of the new administration taking over and implementing and enforcing policy changes
• The delay between when someone is deported or emigrates and their phone line is shut off
• The lag in company reporting — earnings are publicly released one to two months after the quarter ends; there was a surge in immigrants entering the country leading up to the change in administrations and immigration reform began to be implemented and enforced in late January 2025

However, this will change, starting as soon as in 2Q25 and more so in 2H25 as the decline in net immigration begins to flow through U.S. wireless operators’ quarterly figures.

By contrast, the Big Three telcos in Canada have been very forthcoming in talking about and shaping expectations with stakeholders about the effects of immigration policy changes in the country. In 2024 the Canadian government reduced target levels for permanent residents by 20% from 2025 to 2026, set caps on international students, and tightened eligibility requirements for foreign workers. These policy changes are not at the same level as those in the U.S. Why are operators in Canada publicly stating that the country’s lower immigration targets are slowing their subscriber net additions, yet U.S. telcos claim there will be no meaningful impact? Something does not add up.

“We anticipate the environment for our businesses to remain competitive in the coming year with continued moderating wireless subscriber growth versus 2024 as Canada’s immigration and foreign student levels decline.” — Glenn Brandt, CFO, Rogers, 4Q24 earnings transcript

“The decrease in gross and net additions this quarter was a result of a less active market, slowing population growth as a result of changes to government immigration policies, and our focus on attracting subscribers to our premium 5G Rogers brand.” — Rogers 1Q25 earnings press release

“In the quarter, Rogers delivered a combined 34,000 net new wireless subscribers, down from 61,000 last year, reflecting the smaller market size due to reduced immigration.” — Glenn Brandt, CFO of Rogers, 1Q25 earnings transcript

Canadian telecom industry experiencing ‘strong subscriber growth’ thanks to immigration: report — Mobile Syrup, Feb. 22, 2024

Telcos blame Canada’s immigration policies for slower subscriber growth — Mobile Syrup, May 12, 2025

AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon all gained the most subscribers from immigration and now have the most subscribers to lose

The largest U.S. telcos will be disproportionately affected by lower immigration levels. These operators have been the biggest beneficiaries of immigration flows, adding millions of net-new wireless phone subscribers to each of their businesses since 2018, but now this tailwind is turning into a headwind.



All of the major U.S. telcos have clusters of branded retail stores near major border-crossing areas with Mexico, such as in southern California and parts of Texas. Having store clusters near crossing hubs enables telcos to cater to the needs of migrants coming into the country (one of the first things immigrants do when they come into the country is buy wireless phones and phone plans) and jockey for new phone subscriber opportunities.

Tactics U.S. telcos can employ to mitigate the immigration impact

Though some telcos might start to publicly discuss the impact of immigration on their businesses, TBR expects most U.S. telcos to remain cagey about these changes and the effects of immigration on their businesses. TBR believes the telcos can leverage certain tactics to mask or mitigate the impact to their business results.

Indicators to watch

• Free line offers: Offering free lines enables telcos to show enhanced phone connection figures even though the revenue from the free line is not generating the revenue of an actual phone subscriber. Telcos will likely still receive activation fees and collect some other taxes and fees for allowing subscribers to carry the “free” line.
• Increase in competitive pricing offers and promotions: Special deals enable telcos to retain existing customers and take phone connection share from other operators. This could serve to offset some of the negative effects of immigration-related phone disconnections.
• Timing of line shutdowns: Another potential tactic telcos could employ is to delay the roll-off of line shutdowns. One situation where this can occur is when illegal immigrants are deported, leaving their phone service still in effect even though no one is using it and the bill is unlikely to be paid. There is also a trend of emigration, whereby immigrants (legal or illegal) leave the country voluntarily, canceling their phone service before they leave. This is another headwind to phone connection metrics for the telecom industry.
• Increase in allowance for doubtful accounts: This is also referred to as allowance for credit losses. The shutdowns described above typically lead to bad debt expense, which will likely rise with deportations on pace to exceed 500,000 in 2025.

Key takeaways

If you see minimal impact in operators’ headline wireless phone subscriber numbers from immigration, keep in mind that the aforementioned tactics are likely in play.

The negative effects might not show up in 2Q25 results and might not show up in a major way thereafter because wireless operators might be able to hide most of the impact via programs like offering a free phone line on multiline plans, such as what T-Mobile is doing.

Conclusion

Though the topic is rarely discussed, U.S. wireless operators have been relying on both legal and illegal immigrants to drive a significant portion of their underlying growth in phone connection net additions.

U.S. wireless operators face a major new headwind starting in 2H25 as traditionally important drivers of net wireless phone additions — operators’ most lucrative customers — slow meaningfully. With total immigration levels (legal and illegal) into the U.S. down by more than 50% so far this year compared to year-ago levels, coupled with an increase in deportations of existing residents as well as other population headwinds, telcos will struggle to demonstrate the same level of phone net addition numbers they have enjoyed for the past decade.