Celfocus and Telecoms.com: Annual Industry Report

Key Takeaways:

• More than half of respondents are pleased with the telecom industry’s business performance year-to-date, viewing it as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’
• AI (excl. GenAI), Automation, and Machine Learning (ML) are the top priority investment areas for telecoms organisations in 2025
• Nearly a third of respondents have already started implementing and using AI solutions in some areas
• Meanwhile, there is a dichotomy of views in the industry on whether AI will have a transformative or incremental impact on telecoms
• Almost two thirds of respondents consider edge computing very important, if not critical, to existing telecom networks
• However, nearly seven in ten respondents state their organisations to be still in an exploratory stage of edge computing
• Top two key drivers to deploy Wi-Fi 7 are introducing new tech use cases and enhancing multi-user experiences
• Despite the key drivers, half of respondents are uncertain about their organisational timelines for deploying Wi-Fi 7