The Telecom Market Must Change: Mobile World Congress 2025 Recap, Featuring Telecom Principal Analyst Chris Antlitz

From post-proof of concept use cases of generative AI and adoption rates of fixed wireless access to missed ROI opportunities of 5G and the vision of 6G, in this episode of “TBR Talks” Telecom Principal Analyst Chris Antlitz joins Patrick to highlight his top takeaways from Mobile World Congress 2025.

Chris considers the implications for the global telecom market and how the market must change. Additionally, he discusses the foundational challenges of global telecom operators and traditional telecom vendors, where governments must interview, and what role hyperscalers will play.

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Art by Amanda Hamilton Sy

The Telecom Market Must Change: Mobile World Congress 2025 Recap, Featuring Telecom Principal Analyst Chris Antlitz

TBR Talks Host Patrick Heffernan: Welcome to TBR Talks: Decoding Strategies and Ecosystems of the Globe’s Top Tech Firms, where we talk business model disruption in the broad technology ecosystem from management consultancies to systems integrators, hyperscalers to independent software vendors, telecom operators to network and infrastructure vendors and chip manufacturers to value added resellers. We’ll be answering some of the key intelligence questions we’ve heard from executives and business unit leaders among the leading professional IT services and telecom vendors.

I’m Patrick Heffernan, Principal Analyst, and today we’ll be talking about this year’s Mobile World Congress with Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst for TBR’s Telecom Practice.

The good news from MWC 2025

You’ve been many, many times now. How many is it, Chris?

Chris Antlitz, TBR Principal Analyst: This was the fifth.

Patrick: The fifth time. So, let’s start with the good news. What did you hear, what did you see that was exciting about what’s happening in the telco space right now?

Chris: Yeah. So, the good news is the event was well attended. It was, in some cases they had record high levels of certain metrics. Second highest attendance ever in the show’s history, so that’s really good.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: From a content standpoint, there were two things that really stood out to me that were good. One is that, for AI, I noticed there’s meat on the bone this time, this time around. Last year when I saw demos and heard people talk about AI, it was more conceptual, more theoretical. This year it started to- some of that started to transition to we’re actually doing some of this with live traffic, like we’re testing some of these things with actual customers that are on telecom networks. And were starting to see outcomes coming from that in terms of KPI improvement, how people are interacting with these things. So, I definitely saw progress over the last year in AI.

Patrick: Okay.

Chris: The second thing that I saw that was good is around fixed wireless access, FWA, and this is about wireless fiber and bringing that to, as a broadband option to, people and businesses, to households and businesses. And it’s a much faster time to market. You don’t have to dig up the ground to put fiber in the ground.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: It’s not as good as fiber, but price for value and the time to market advantage makes fixed wireless access an incredible opportunity for the telcos. And we continue to hear about, you know, adoption rates. We hear about technologies that make FWA better, addresses some of the limitations that the technology originally had and just makes it a much better value proposition all around.

Network API, edge computing, and network slicing opportunities

Patrick: Right. I’m glad you brought up both fixed wireless access and AI, because those are two areas I want to go in detail here. And I think I want to dive kind of into the weeds on some of this based on what you wrote in the special report that was released just recently coming after the event. So, I want to talk about those two things. I want to talk about sort of where things are headed next. But let’s start with one thing that caught me in the write up that you did, and it was talking about network APIs, edge computing, network slicing and some other technology areas where the expectation was that there was going to be growth, there was going to be revenue growth, and it hasn’t been what was expected. And a lot of that revenue you described as cosmetic, that is, it isn’t at scale and it’s not a great margin. Is that- are those areas going to change at all? Do you see where networks slicing, where edge compute, where network APIs is going to become a substantial revenue stream for these companies or no?

Chris: I think it will, but I personally believe that the hyperscalers are going to take those opportunities and they’re going to run with it. So, I’ll give you an example. Cloud computing, right? The cloud as we know it today is centralized computing. You have mega data centers that are doing the processing. That is evolving to distributed computing. Everything from the mega data center all the way out to the device, the endpoint device, and everything in between. Who’s going to own that aspect, that full architecture, right? That framework.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And it’s highly likely that that’s going to be a full hyperscale game. The telcos might have some opportunities here and there, but from large scale opportunity where it’s generating good margin and growth for the telcos, I’m not convinced.

Patrick: Not going to see it. So, is there a reason why the expectation was different a few years ago where companies thought they were going to actually get significant revenue growth or significant revenues out of those areas, or was it just- did they miss time in the market, or did the hyperscalers, I guess, maybe better time the market?

Chris: So, if we go back in time to the beginning of LTE in the 2010’s, that time frame, this is a recurring theme in the telecom industry, that they find a new thing, that they want a new shiny thing that they want to sell and they’re going to grow from. And the telcos don’t wind up realizing that opportunity. It’s someone else. And it’s usually the hyperscalers that realize it. So, what we’re seeing is history repeating itself yet again now, with all these technologies, edge computing being one example, where this is a hyperscaler game and we are seeing we actually we cover this in my group, we have research on this like, where the telcos are at in this market opportunity and where the hyperscalers are at and where they’re thinking down the road.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: It’s also where this is going.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And everything that we see suggests that this is a hyperscale game. They’re going to get the vast majority of the benefit from the enabling technologies of these types of things like network slicing, edge computing, etc. APIs.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And the telcos will participate in the opportunity, but their portion of that value chain is very small relative to what others are taking.

The bright spot of GenAI

Patrick: I’m glad you framed it up as both a historical trend and also the bright shiny thing, because that’s the second thing I wanted to get at, which was artificial intelligence and GenAI in particular. So, in your write up, you talk about where you are seeing, and you mentioned at the beginning, sort of the bright spot of these applications, I like the way you put it, there’s sort of actual meat on those bones where we’re now year three into the GenAI hype cycle, and return on investment, like actual contribution to revenue growth, business growth, is finally starting to come around. We’re starting to see things at scale. But across not just the telco space, but across all of the applications of AI, we see that sort of low hanging fruit of, you know, customer service, and sales and marketing. Those are things that sort of everybody is doing. So encouraging to see the telcos are doing it as well. Were there any examples of things where you sort of took a step back and said, wow I had not thought of an AI application there, an AI solution- enabled solution there? And this is an area where maybe AI is going to make a difference for some of these telcos?

Chris: So, for RAN, there will be a lot of transformation in that domain. But not yet. It’s going to take some time. Right now, we see AI being applied for energy management, energy optimization, sustainability at the radio layer. The RAN is the biggest hog of electricity from a telco network standpoint. There are ways to mitigate that. You know, I’ve seen some- in some cases telcos can get up to 15% energy reduction in the network. That’s a lot if you think about scale.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: So, but that’s what I consider to be a preliminary AI use case for that domain. But I heard about some things for like RAN planning, propagation analysis, Ray tracing, simulation analysis like using like meta data, like heavy duty modeling, where you can really drive incremental improvement, but incremental at-

Patrick: A massive scale.

Chris: At a massive scale, it becomes meaningful.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: So that’s the domain, I would say. But from a telco perspective, a lot of them are talking about AI and other domains. But like you said, it’s mostly- what they’re actually doing at a-where there’s the meat on the bone, if you will, is in the call center and the OSS BSS domains.

Data readiness for AI

Patrick: So, in all of the other industries that we cover, the sort of- everyone is ready for AI accept their data. Like that is always the- and for every single enterprise, that’s the biggest stumbling block. It’s not the business case, it’s not the cost, it’s not the lack of capability, and it’s not the lack of people to do it. It’s the data. Is that true in telcos too, or do they have a better data story?

Chris: They might have the worst. *laughs*

Patrick: *laughs*

Chris: So- well, maybe the government, maybe the government.

Patrick: Did not expect that, okay.

Chris: The telcos are very siloed. And they say they have data lakes. But the reality is they are very siloed.

Patrick: Yeah

Chris: Almost all of them. And they- where things get interesting is the idea of agentic AI and the orchestration of agents.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: Because it’s okay to have those silos if you have an overlay, if you have an agent model assigned to that silo.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: But if that agent is able to talk to another data silo agent and they can talk together, you’re actually breaking down the silo in a way, because you’re getting the outcome that you want, even though you internally are set up where you have data silos. So, like when I talk about the interconnection between call center OSS and BSS, you could have a variety of agents inter playing in that mix depending on the chain that you need to do, like what the customer needs in that call. There’s some vendors that are doing a lot of work around this stuff and yeah, I saw some really advanced like sophisticated stuff that is being worked on, and it’s come a long way. The telcos usually move slow on this stuff. So, this time around I’m seeing speed on the call center OSS and BSS areas specifically.

Patrick: Yeah, yeah. Well it’s fascinating too because the silos are- what we found early on is that the silos are super helpful when you want to try and cleanse a limited amount of data and then do something with it, be able to actually use an AI enabled solution to generate some sort of return on that investment. It’s easier when it’s siloed, but it also doesn’t scale across the enterprise. And that’s where the agentic part comes in.

Fixed wireless access

I want to pivot to fixed wireless access, because you talked about it in your piece as being an area where the CSP’s in particular have sort of misunderstood the opportunity that’s there. And you said that the industry as a whole is going to change the way it thinks about fixed wireless access, FWA, and that it’ll be an important component of the broader picture going forward. So, does that- is what you’re saying that the CSP’s have misunderstood the opportunity and will continue to miss out on the opportunity going forward? Or is there way for them to sort of play catch up and pivot their own strategies to be able to take advantage of what you’re describing is going to happen with FWA?

Chris: Yeah. So, there are some telcos in the world that are- have taken that opportunity and they’ve been running with it. T-Mobile, Verizon, the India telcos are probably the poster children for doing that at very large scale.

Patrick: Really.

Chris: There has been- so, T-Mobile was a thought leader here. They were one of the first to say we see that opportunity and we are going full speed ahead. And they did it. And they’ve been very successful with this. A lot of the- most of the industry, this is five years ago, most of the industry said ain’t going to happen. It’s going to be fiber. It’s going to be DOCSIS. And they just didn’t believe it. They didn’t believe it. And they said there’s this problem, there’s that problem, there’s this problem. But they failed to see the solutions that were being developed. There is tremendous innovation across the technology stack to do, on the spectrum side, on the radio side, on the backhaul side, to do these things at scale and to dramatically reduce or completely eliminate some of the original challenges that were around to actually do that technology. So, T-Mobile saw that early on. I give them a lot of credit for this.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: We are seeing gradually other telcos are also waking up and they’re saying, wait a minute, we need to relook at FWA. And we are at, we’re seeing this now, we see this in our research. We see telcos now, that just a few years ago they said, absolutely not. We’re not going to do FWA, we don’t need to, because everything is going to be fiber. Everything is not going to be fiber. It is cost prohibitive.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: It doesn’t make logical sense to have everybody wired with fiber. And for whatever reason, it could be societal reasons, there could be topography reasons, like you might have a house at the top of a mountain. How are you going to get the fiber up there? Like it- just things like that

Patrick: Cost alone. Yeah, just the cost

Chris: Yeah, the cost. And it’s like there needs to be a rethink and a reassessment. Yes, there’s going to be a lot of fiber connecting a lot of premises, but it’s going to be- a portion is going to be fiber, and you’re going to have other portions that are other broadband technologies that are fiber-like and that provide more than enough broadband speed and bandwidth and everything else to the end users, latency as well.

Satellite

Patrick: Right. Okay. And then I’ve got to- just because of everything you just said, I need to ask one more question before we wrap. And that’s in that piece about- in your in your comments about FWA in the piece and then you mentioned it briefly here, there’s still- there’s satellite, there’s a term for it like non terrestrial network. So, and I know our colleague, Boz, has been talking about the space opportunities here for quite some time now. What’s your sense- is that going to be something that the CSP’s and others treat the same way they treated FWA? That is, they don’t see the opportunity that’s going to be there, that’s coming right around the corner, because the sense is that that’s coming really fast, right?

Chris: Yeah. So, this is a similar idea because if we go back in time 5 or 6 years or so, probably like right around the time Starlink was really starting to get the satellites in the sky. Tremendous skepticism. “Satellite aint going to work. You can only send text messages. You can’t do calls through satellite on a regular smartphone. Will never happen.” I can’t tell you how many people have told me that.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And these are like people that have been in the industry for a long time. And they fail to see that there is tremendous innovation. Things are not the same as it used to be. Huge breakthroughs in like Doppler radar and how they do interstellar lasers, where they use lasers to interconnect the- to bounce signals between the satellites.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: The coordination of the birds in the sky, like it’s they just- and then the capacity load that you can put in these systems, with software upgrades Starlink can double the capacity of their systems by doing things in a more optimal way, or putting more satellite stuff and re-interconnecting the mesh.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And here again, we see now there’s this wake up. “Oh, wait a minute. Satellite’s actually legitimate.”

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: They can actually do more than just text messages through it. Now we can do- voice is coming and data is coming. Soon you’re going to be maybe even watching some low-resolution video over satellite at some point in the not-too-distant future. This is coming.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: And you know, the telcos, some of them are partnering. They’re being proactive. Some of them are going to be facing another competitive dimension now.

Patrick: Right. Right.

Chris: That they weren’t expecting.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And yeah, it’s NTN is very much here to stay. And it’s going to be very impactful.

Patrick: Yeah. And that that innovation speed that people that are maybe too in the weeds of what they’re doing, don’t see the innovation that’s happening right outside their door.

Chris: Yeah.

Industry reset

Patrick: That’s going to have an impact on them. So, let’s- I want to end with your last comment in your piece that was basically, the telco space is unhealthy and deteriorating. Can’t end on a bad note. So, you’ve got to spin it for us Chris, and tell us how is it that we’re going to go from unhealthy and deteriorating in five years to where we’ve got a robust segment again and growth in the top of the space?

Chris: Yeah. So, there needs to be a reset in the industry. There needs to be a reset of scale and regulation. Those are probably the two big things.

Patrick: okay.

Chis: So, from a scale perspective there needs- telecom is a scale game. You have to have a lot of scale to have margins that are competitive and to invest in your business at the appropriate level. And there’s a lot of countries still in the world, many of which are in Europe, that are subscale. You have tiny telcos, you know, a small fraction of the size of the ones we have in our country, like a 10th of the size or even smaller of an AT&T. Like they don’t have the scale to do some of the things that they want to do, and then regulation holds them back, whatever they would be able to do. So, they don’t want to invest. There’s disincentives to invest. Those things need to be addressed at a high level. And-

Patrick: Let me- just to clarify, what is the regulatory component that holds them back? Is it because they can’t merge? Is it because they can’t- so, it’s like an anti-competitive regulatory environment that’s keeping them from getting bigger.

Chris: Yeah. So for example, like in the EU you have the member states, but they don’t want the telcos to cross marry.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: Because they don’t want to have those combinations. They want to have national telcos in each country. So, you have subscale countries there that have a population of less than 10 million people. And then they have three telcos, three or four telcos there. They don’t have scale, versus an AT&T or Verizon, they have over 100 million subscribers each.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: Right. It’s a completely different ballgame. And that needs to change. If Europe is a union, show it. Show us the union.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: Not just the currency, but at a more local level and at an industry level. Show us the unity and then you can start to have a healthier, more sustainable ecosystem, especially in Europe. Europe needs the most work, I would say, of the major economic blocs, Europe needs the most work.

Patrick: And so, if Europe gets its act together, then in five years we can be saying this industry as a whole is growing and is healthy.

Chris: I think from a margin level it’ll be healthier, like from a sustainability standpoint, managing the debt, managing the cost of keeping up with innovation will be healthier. The growth side, I don’t know. AI is going to give a cost efficiency gain, opportunity for the telcos to drive more cost out of the business.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: On the revenue side, if- this is still a hyperscaler game. Even if they get that stuff figured out, it’s still a hyperscale game for the really big picture transformational stuff. And I’ll loop in things like AR/VR and some of these- these are going to be huge things in the not too distant future.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: Who’s going to generate the majority of the money from those technologies?

Patrick: Connectivity in the data that’s required for that. So yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Big picture takeaway from MWC 2025

So, we didn’t- we got into Europe, but we didn’t really get into a lot of the other things I know that you’re interested in, which is sort of the opportunities that are going to come on the defense side spending, and what that will mean for the telcos. It’s something we can go into in another session. But any last kind of wrap ups, like as you think about five years worth of going to Mobile World Congress, any sort of this is the biggest picture I take away from- this is the biggest trend.

Chris: There’s a chance that this might be the peak of the event. We might see some challenges going forward. And I think that part of that might be driven by, you know, when I’m talking about the five years out, like there needs to be a lot of consolidation, a lot of fundamental changes, that create tremendous volatility and uncertainty.

Patrick: Right, right.

Chris: And in those situations, you’re going to have a lot of changes in how this industry has been for the last, you know, last few decades. It’s going to change a lot. Things are going to change a lot in the next five years, I think.

Patrick: Well as analysts it’s great, change is always good for us.

Chris: Yeah,

Patrick: It gives us a lot to talk about.

Chris: I think the silver lining in it though is, yeah, there’s going to be a lot of maybe not so good things happening. But if you look at the long term, this kind of needs to happen. And this kind of happens to every industry where you have a rationalization phase and then whatever’s left can continue on in a more healthy state. Over the long term, I think this is actually a good thing for the industry to go through this phase.

Patrick: Yeah, I have to ask because what you just said that, you know, every industry kind of goes to this, but the regulatory component, to come back to that for a second. It’s not just the industry that needs to change. It really is the regulatory environment and maybe the regulatory mindset within Europe that needs to change as well.

Chris: Yeah. And this was talked about a lot at the event.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: I think that- and this is the, part of the topic of the write up that we did.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: Trump is changing everything.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: Everything is on the table and it is subject to change.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And this could be a silver lining in the sense that, from a Europe perspective, in that they’re waking up. And they’re realizing we need to make these fundamental changes.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: And if that’s what it took, if it took Trump to get Europe back to moving again.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: And improving and progressing, that might not be such a bad thing. That’s actually good for the whole world

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: if Europe is back.

Patrick: Well, if you want to rearrange the furniture you roll a grenade across the floor. It’s not such a bad tactic. So yeah. You don’t know what you’re going to get in the end. But at least your furniture is going to be rearranged.

Final thoughts

So excellent Chris, thank you so much for coming in. Please look for Chris’s Special Report on the website and there’s a ton of Special Reports that have been done over the years on Mobile World Congress. We’ve also recorded a few more of these episodes in previous years. Look for those. And of course, look to the podcast for additional research around telcos and around everything else that TBR covers. Thank you.

Next week we’ll be back to our prediction series speaking with TBR Principal Analyst Allan Krans, about his 2025 predictions for cloud market share. Don’t forget to send us your key intelligence questions on business strategy, ecosystems, and management consulting through the form in the show notes below. Visit tbri.com to learn how we help tech companies large and small answer these questions with the research, data and analysis my guests bring to this conversation every week.

Once again, I’m your host Patrick Heffernan, Principal Analyst at TBR. Thanks for joining us and see you next week.

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