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Market Forecast: European Wholesale Telecom Services Forecast, 2026-2030

Jan Hein Bakkers — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Forecast study provides the five-year forecast for the European wholesale telecom services market and delivers insights into the drivers and inhibitors of growth.

“AI is redefining connectivity requirements of wholesale buyers and their end-customers. AI, automation and APIs will be key building blocks in the Wholesale 2.0 era,” said Jan Hein Bakkers, senior research director, Telecom at IDC.

Adaptive Monetization: The Next Frontier of Commercial Flexibility and Control

Christopher Silberberg, Tiffany McCormick — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note defines adaptive monetization systems, a category of monetization capability built to respond to the cost, output, and value volatility that AI-embedded products introduce. It maps the components of a modern monetization stack — pricing and catalog, usage capture, rating, charging and credit control, and billing — against the demands of real-time, usage-responsive commercial models, and gives suppliers and buyers a framework for judging where adaptive capabilities are needed versus where they add unnecessary complexity.

“When cost, output, and value are all moving at once, you cannot fix monetization by patching one component of price, charge, or bill. You need systems built to adapt across all of them before and during consumption, not after,” said Chris Silberberg, research manager, IDC.

AI-RAN Moves from Pilot to Production

Ajeet Das — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note details how AI-RAN shifted from pilot projects to commercial deployment in 2026, with Ericsson and Nokia launching subscription AI-RAN platforms, the AI-RAN Alliance growing to 132 members, and Verizon extending agentic AI across 60,000 sites. It outlines the Alliance's four pillars (AI for RAN, AI on RAN, AI and RAN, and agentic AI), explains how AWS and Microsoft Azure position themselves as orchestration and monetization layers for shared RAN infrastructure, and discusses the ROI validation gap and the GPU versus baseband architecture debate hindering adoption. IDC recommends operators focus on validated, high-ROI use cases such as energy savings and massive MIMO tuning, delay second-wave applications such as computer vision, and consider hyperscaler and accelerator decisions as core infrastructure choices for upcoming budget cycles.

"AI-RAN has moved from lab pilot to a board-level budget line in a single quarter — the operators who win will be those who validate ROI and adopt an accelerator strategy first." — Ajeet Das, research director, Worldwide Telecom Network Infrastructure, IDC.

Market Forecast: Worldwide Datacenter Colocation Services Forecast, 2026–2030

Olga Yashkova — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation provides the five-year forecast for the datacenter colocation services market and delivers insights into the drivers and inhibitors of growth. It quantifies colocation revenue by region through 2030 and captures how AI and power constraints are reshaping the market.

"The colocation market has moved past its growth-story phase into something closer to a supply crisis. AI workloads aren't just adding demand, they are redefining what a datacenter needs to be, from power density to cooling to interconnection. Providers that can secure power and execute fast are commanding real pricing power for the first time in over a decade. The ones still operating like traditional landlords will fall behind." — Olga Yashkova, research manager, Worldwide Telecommunications Services, IDC

IDC Survey Spotlight: How Do Wholesale Telcos in EMEA Adapt Their Networks to Increased AI Workloads?

Jan Hein Bakkers — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight highlights data from IDC's May 2026 Worldwide Telco DX Network Infrastructure and Cloud Survey. The data provides insights into network strategy actions that wholesale operators in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are prioritizing in response to increased AI workloads.

Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight: How Are Networking and Telecom Spending Impacting IT Investment Shifts?

Paul Hughes — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight looks at how enterprises view the impact of tariffs and economic shifts on the cost of IT services, and in particular, telecom and network services spending concerns rank well below other segments. As enterprises navigate geopolitical realities that affect business planning and investment, business continuity and connectivity resilience remain priorities, but longer-term contracts reduce much of the cost pressure that comes from other IT segments.

The data in this Spotlight comes from IDC’s Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending Survey Wave 4, with 1,835 respondents across 27 countries and 15 vertical industries.

IDC's Worldwide Telecom Services Taxonomy, 2026

Kresimir Alic — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study provides a comprehensive overview of the definitions used for measuring telecom services markets across the globe. The top-level methodology used to research these markets is also outlined in the study. The taxonomy summarizes the segmentation used throughout the IDC Worldwide Telecom Services Tracker, which includes service access type and end-user type. The study also outlines the metrics used in the tracker and its add-ons — service connections, traffic generated on those service connections, and associated spending by users. Other key indicators published include service penetration levels and average revenue per user (ARPU) calculations.

"IDC's Worldwide Telecom Services Taxonomy provides a standard, consistent guide for our analysts across the globe who research telecom services markets at a country level. These markets must be assessed from the bottom up, as they are all different. Therefore, a foundational taxonomy study that evolves with the markets over time is essential." — Research Director Kresimir Alic, Worldwide Telecom Services, IDC

Telcos’ Data Dilemma

Chris Silberberg, Peter Chahal — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation covers indicative findings from the telecom sample of IDC’s March 2026 Global DataSphere Data Utilization Survey.

Telcos are data rich. In the AI era, when data is critical for developing, optimizing, and running dynamic automation at scale, this should be a significant advantage for the industry. But the reality looks quite different as telcos struggle with significant data fragmentation, operational silos, and a difficult talent landscape that blocks the analysis of and action on useful data. At the same time, many telcos are struggling with data volumes growing faster than their ability to turn them into useful insights.

This report provides recommendations on where telcos should prioritize their investments to increase their capacity to leverage and create value from their data.

Verizon Deepens Its Partnership with Google Cloud to Further Automate Network Operations and Service Delivery to the Enterprise

Paul Hughes — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

On August 24, 2026, Verizon and Google Cloud announced a partnership to embed Google's Gemini Enterprise platform across Verizon's customer service, network operations, and marketing platform. With a previous $1-billion-plus contract already in place for Verizon dark fiber connecting Google's datacenters, coopetition between hyperscalers and carriers evolves quickly to partnership as Google becomes invested in Verizon's network functions, delivery, and future capabilities.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Telecom Autonomous Network Operations Solutions 2026 Vendor Assessment

Christopher Silberberg, Ajeet Das — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The IDC MarketScape assesses the worldwide telecom autonomous network operations capabilities for the telecommunications sector and discusses what criteria are the most important for companies to consider when selecting a vendor. It reviews the critical operational support systems (OSS) capabilities of key suppliers across orchestration, assurance, and network inventory, which are foundational for autonomous network operation strategies. It also considers the long-term road map for these vendors and how they are supporting customers to leverage agentic AI to unlock higher levels of network autonomy.

“Telecom operators have been striving for increasingly autonomous networks for a long term. Backed up by a foundational vision provided by the TM Forum Autonomous Network (AN) framework, operators are now making strides to achieve AN Level 4 (highly autonomous networks) by 2030. To do this, they need a mix of strategic partners that can deliver autonomy horizontally across network domains, with the depth expertise necessary to ensure reliability and efficiency when executing at a domain level,” says Chris Silberberg, research manager, IDC.