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Mobile connectivity is powering considerable economic growth. Telcos aren’t poised to capture the massive upside predicted through end of the decade.
GSMA's Mobile Economy 2026 report states mobile's total contribution to global GDP is estimated to climb from $7.6 trillion in 2025 to $11.3 trillion by 2030, a reflection of its expected impact across the value chains it touches. Yet, the operator-specific revenue growth expected during that time is far more modest: $1.19 trillion to $1.36 trillion over the same stretch.
A separate PwC study points to the same underlying pressure: PwC's Global Telecom Outlook 2025–2029 projects industry revenue growing from $1.15 trillion in 2024 to roughly $1.32 trillion in 2029, a CAGR of about 2.8%.
Telecom is now a mature, low-growth industry in many major markets with EBITDA margins stable and ARPU largely stagnant, according to Deloitte's 2026 Telecommunications Industry Outlook.
The uncomfortable question for every telecom board is this: if connectivity is becoming more valuable to the economy, why is operator share not expanding with it?
Yes, market saturation and pricing pressure are at play. We also have to face the reality that many telcos still manage connectivity as a product line in a market that rewards business models that compound customer relationships, partner economics and platform utility.
The familiar playbook of incremental network investment, adjacent product launches and broad digital transformation has hit a wall. It can still improve efficiency, but creating a credible path back to growth will be much harder unless it is tied to a clear choice about what kind of business an operator wants to become.
Before choosing a path, leadership teams must be willing to ask harder questions than traditional planning cycles usually demand:
Avoiding these uncomfortable questions is how operators end up with complex portfolios, diluted capital and no clear route back to growth.
In the Rakuten Symphony 2026 Industry Growth Report, we noted that the most obvious and effective growth lever is existing subscriber bases. Tapping into the full potential requires telcos examine and choose among three primary strategic options:
Each path has a distinct cost profile, timeline and risk structure. The most appropriate choice depends on the operator’s starting position and business ambition.
Unfortunately, the current landscape often sees participants playing at techco cost levels while earning utility-grade returns. It’s the “G trap.”
Pursuing some hybrid of the three paths is not a viable long-term option because operators usually end up chasing business promise via complex, slow-moving innovation.
A utility investing at techco scale while generating utility-like revenues ends up achieving neither status. They are simply an operator running misaligned business models on one balance sheet.
Telcos need to pick a path and execute at the appropriate cost structure, mindful that an additional path could emerge based on eventual success.
Operating as a utility treats connectivity as a commodity and builds supporting business infrastructure accordingly. This looks like lean, automated network operations with pricing that reflects the core product’s commodity realities. It does not try to defend margin on a saturated service or develop adjacent offerings that can’t generate genuine return.
This path only works when cost structures match ambition. Attempting to invest at techco scale while only reaping utility returns neither makes for a good utility or leading tech company.
For operators that execute well, this looks a lot more like an infrastructure fund than a technology company. Returns come from contracted service-level agreements, not the pursuit of growth.
The ecosystem approach turns connectivity into the entry point for a broader commercial relationship. It requires a customer base large enough to support a cross-service flywheel, in addition to shared identity, currency and partners.
This should not be confused with a co-marketing arrangement or some kind of conglomerate discount where multiple offerings are bundled and discounted except with no material exchange underneath.
A successful ecosystem strategy structures revenue-share at the operational level. In Rakuten Symphony’s report, we note the airline industry’s success partnering with credit card companies to substantially grow profit based on shared customer data, co-designed products and split economic upside.
We also point to Rakuten Mobile’s latest audited data, which demonstrated its first EBITDA profit in any Q1 since entering the MNO business. Those results are driven by an ecosystem that generates substantial revenue at a fraction of the churn. Subscribers that participate in the ecosystem, taking two, three, four or more services, are more profitable and significantly less likely to leave. The returns would be impossible serving the same subscriber base with one service.
Something very interesting happens along this path: the customer interacts with a bundle it actually values because it meets a real need for them versus simply being cheaper. The moment a customer moves from being satisfied to being loyal, you can stop tracking monthly churn and begin measuring lifetime value and acquisition cost.
Instead of trying to compete in every market segment, the platform approach sees operators building an infrastructure layer, licensed spectrum, network data, privacy and governance frameworks, loyalty infrastructure and network APIs that specialist providers can leverage.
It is overwhelmingly hard for a single operator to build an actually differentiated winning proposition for every segment it serves. In reality, a healthcare connectivity provider or enterprise IoT company or youth-driven MVNOs each need deep domain expertise to actually be successful. The vast majority of telcos aren’t structurally positioned to be expert in a range of domains.
The report recalls the California Gold Rush, where the merchants selling picks and shovels built more durable businesses than most of the miners. Similarly, on the platform path, the operator’s job is to be the shovel instead of competing for gold.
Deloitte's 2026 Telecommunications Industry Outlook sizes the addressable B2B "beyond connectivity" opportunity across AI, cybersecurity, cloud services layered on top of core connectivity at roughly $620 billion in 2026, against a core connectivity B2B market of about $270 billion. This is more than double the size of connectivity itself and operators potentially stand to take a portion if they can properly build and market the underlying layer.
It’s easy to confuse this approach with a wholesale strategy, but it’s not about reselling network capacity at commodity prices. Rather, it is selling capability, data governance, loyalty infrastructure and APIs that a specialist provider alone cannot build.
Suddenly, the specialists drive revenue growth instead of subscribers, simultaneously insulating telcos from the same retail switching dynamics that squeeze utilities.
The market realities noted at the top of this piece are clear evidence that moving forward slowly, stuck in neutral, comes at a cost that compounds the longer committing to a decision is deferred.
Technology is not the problem. It is ready. The challenge now is choosing the right business strategy and executing flawlessly.
The Rakuten Symphony 2026 Industry Growth Report explores the requirements of each path. Importantly, it does not attempt to provide the answer of what to do next. It does dive into what to expect along the way.
A useful test for management teams and boards: if your current strategy were presented with no company name attached, would it be obvious whether you are building a utility, an ecosystem or a platform? If the answer is no, strategic ambiguity threatens to undercut growth potential.
Check out the full report now for deeper insights into the opportunity and decisions facing every telco today.
