The End of Connectivity as a Product: What Telecom Leaders Must Do Next

Bo Ekelund, Partner in Amrop’s Global Digital and Telecom practices, works with industrial, technology, and telecom leaders navigating growth, transformation, and board- and C-suite succession. Together with Amrop’s Telecom team, he will be at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, March 2–5. If you’re attending and thinking about leadership, talent, and human-capital strategy for the programmable-networks era, we look forward to meeting.

Below, we share our perspective on how telecom leaders are moving beyond connectivity as a product toward platform-first, API-enabled, AI-governed models - and how they are reshaping capital allocation, talent, and culture to capture the next wave of value.

The foundation, not the destination

Connectivity is no longer a standalone growth engine for MNO’s. Across regions, network services show flat or negative core growth, also as operators squeeze costs to protect margins. Investors are increasingly impatient: declining ROCE and heavy CapEx demand new answers - either scale plays (consolidation, shared infrastructure) or a credible move up the stack into differentiated services. For executive teams, the implication is clear: treat connectivity as the foundation, not the destination.

A large share of consumers would pay for enhanced service experience at various moments, and as many operators sell one-size-fits-all plans – they are then foregoing a perceived meaningful ARPU upside. Meanwhile, analysts flag structural low returns on network investments, especially in Europe, making it hard to justify status-quo models. The strategic choices leaders face is therefore twofold:

Double down on scale and capital efficiency: mergers, tower/fiber carve-outs, network-sharing and spectrum-financing vehicles can improve ROCE and free cash for strategic bets.
Invest in differentiated product portfolios: service-led revenues (Enterprise and financial services, QoS on demand, identity/fraud services) that leverage programmable network strengths and APIs to capture new margin.

Most executives claim both approaches can co-exist; the right balance depends on market structure, regulatory permissiveness, and leadership appetite for risk.

Networks meet developers

Network APIs (Open Gateway, CAMARA, ADUNA, vendor marketplaces) are likely to enable new distribution models. With major operators and vendors standardizing interfaces, cloud partners and third-party developers helping commercialize them, a developer-driven ecosystem is emerging - one that can unlock services worth hundreds of billions over time.

For telcos, we can clearly see that the API playbook brings new capabilities into focus:

Outcome oriented product and platform thinking expose capabilities as composable APIs (QoS, number-verify, SIM-swap, identity, edge compute) with clear SLAs and developer tools.
Commercial partnerships: collaborate with cloud providers, ISVs and system integrators to reach customers where they build apps.
New leadership profiles: product managers who understand developer platforms and incentives, platform engineering leads, commercial heads fluent in API monetization and ecosystem economics.

AI and the “Agentic Telco”

AI is shifting from pilot projects to production: AIOps and autonomous network functions reduce cost and speed problem resolution; generative AI augments CX and personalization. The estimates we have seen suggest meaningful upsides to earnings and productivity, but scaling AI requires an experimental culture, great partners and robust governance.

Executives must focus on:

Operationalizing AI: a closed-loop automation for network optimization, predictive maintenance and automated customer journeys.
Governance & compliance: audit trails, bias mitigation, data minimization and alignment with regimes like the EU AI Act.
Hybrid skillsets: leaders who can lead targeted open operations innovation, that combine domain telecom operations, service transformation, knowledge with data science, ML engineering and risk/compliance expertise.

Unlocking “TechCo” investments

Infrastructure funds, spectrum vehicles and tower/fiber monetization are changing balance-sheet dynamics. With strong customer-backed innovation emerging, these models can be even more transformational than before- releasing capital for service innovation while allowing specialist investors to optimize asset returns. We already see new entrants emerging. But they also demand financial and strategic sophistication from leadership: negotiating minority vs. full divestment, structuring JV governance, and preserving strategic optionality.

Regulatory clarity is a make-or-break issue for players in geographies involved. Harmonized, investment-friendly spectrum allocation, clearer rules around differentiated services (within net neutrality frameworks), and practical approaches to burden-sharing with large internet platforms would catalyze investment. Executive teams must therefore also be active policy participants - not only to advocate practical reforms but to design business models that can operate within evolving rules.

Speed, talent, culture and the human OS

Transformation fails without people. More and more, we see speed of implementation matters more than strategy. This means efficiency alone is not enough, and that leadership talent and the human operating system makes all the difference. To face these new opportunities, we now also face telcos with gaps to close in leadership, product management, cloud engineering, data analytics and software delivery. In these cases, successful human capital approaches seem to combine:

Strategic hiring for hard-to-build roles (platform engineers, data scientists, developer relations).
Large-scale upskilling (bootcamps, internal academies, rotations) to convert existing talent.
Speed/cultural shifts: Integrating new leaders carrying capabilities and experience from the speed required, empowered cross-functional teams, outcome-based KPIs, rapid experimentation budgets and building a middle management that tolerates intelligent failure.

In these challenges, we tend to recommend leadership behaviors to prioritize are, the ability to attract top talent, strong on delegation, customer-centric product thinking, and the ability to decisively operate fast paced partnerships and experiments at the intersection of technology, regulation and commercial models.

Telecom leaders who build platform-driven, API-enabled, AI-governed services that balance scale and capital efficiency with differentiated, service-led revenue streams are in pole position in this race. To capture value they need explore financing and asset structures, developer ecosystems, hybrid talent and create culture shifts and active regulatory engagement.

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Meet Amrop’s partners at Mobile World Congress (March 2–5, Barcelona) to discuss talent, leadership, and human capital strategy for the programmable networks era.