The World’s Largest Cellular IoT Operators in 2026

Back in October 2021, I wrote a post on The 3G4G Blog asking Are there 50 Billion IoT Devices yet? The question went back to one of the best-known predictions from the early days of the Internet of Things: that there would be 50 billion IoT devices by 2020. That number referred to the wider IoT universe, not just cellular IoT. The devices could be connected using cellular networks, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, LPWA technologies and many other forms of connectivity.

When I looked at the numbers in 2021, the reality was very different. GSMA estimated 13.1 billion IoT connections in 2020, of which around 1.9 billion were cellular. Ericsson estimated 12.4 billion IoT devices, including around 1.6 billion cellular IoT connections, while Transforma Insights put cellular IoT at around 1.55 billion connections in mid-2021. Five years later, the picture is clearer, although IoT counting remains anything but simple. 

Transforma Insights estimates that there were 21 billion active IoT devices globally at the end of 2025, rising to 48 billion by 2035. So, interestingly, the market may eventually get very close to that famous 50 billion figure, just around 15 years later than originally expected. Transforma Insights The accompanying Transforma forecast presentation shows the same progression from 21.0 billion in 2025 to 48.0 billion in 2035.

Most of those devices are not cellular. Transforma estimates that short-range technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee account for around 79–80% of IoT connections. Cellular represents 11.3% of the total in 2025, or about 2.4 billion devices, increasing to 14.1%, or 6.8 billion, by 2035. The remainder includes non-cellular LPWA, satellite and other technologies. Transforma Insights The presentation also breaks the cellular component down across 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mMTC and 5G non-mMTC technologies.

There is, however, an important complication. Berg Insight estimates that there were 4.2 billion cellular IoT connections at the end of 2025, significantly higher than Transforma's 2.4 billion figure. Berg forecasts this reaching 6.5 billion in 2030. 

This is a good reminder that IoT numbers depend heavily on what is being counted and how. Transforma builds its forecasts from active devices and individual applications, whereas mobile operators commonly report IoT SIMs, cards, terminals, managed connections or M2M accesses. These measures are not necessarily equivalent. That distinction becomes particularly obvious when looking at individual operators. The three Chinese operators alone currently report more than 3 billion IoT connections, already more than Transforma's 2.4 billion estimate for the entire global active cellular IoT device base at the end of 2025. The numbers therefore should not be mixed as though they measure precisely the same thing.

With that caveat, it is nevertheless fascinating to see the scale of IoT connectivity being managed by the world's largest mobile operators. Based on the latest available operator reporting and estimates, this is how the largest cellular IoT and M2M connectivity providers currently compare:

Rank	Operator	Reported/estimated cellular IoT / M2M connections
1	China Mobile	1,511 million
2	China Telecom	806 million
3	China Unicom	772.6 million
4	Vodafone	244 million
5	AT&T	~150–160 million
6	Bharti Airtel India	86.06 million
7–9	Verizon	~62–69 million
7–9	Deutsche Telekom	~62–69 million
7–9	Telefónica	64.74 million
10=	KDDI	~60.6 million
10=	Orange	60.49 million

Approximate figures based on latest available operator reporting and estimates, 2025–2026. Definitions vary by operator.

China Mobile is in a completely different league from most operators. At the end of June 2026 it reported 1.511 billion IoT card connections, alongside 1.011 billion conventional mobile customers. In other words, China Mobile now has roughly half a billion more IoT card connections than mobile customers.

There is also a nice connection back to my 2021 post. Transforma Insights told me at the time that there were around 1.55 billion cellular IoT connections globally. China Mobile alone now reports 1.511 billion IoT card connections, almost the same number. Again, the definitions are not directly comparable, but it gives some indication of just how dramatically the scale of operator IoT connectivity has changed.

China Telecom is second. Its first-half 2026 results show 806 million IoT connected devices, up from 746 million at the end of 2025. That means it added around 60 million connected devices in just six months.

China Unicom follows closely with 772.608 million IoT terminal connections at the end of June 2026. 

Together, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom now report approximately 3.09 billion IoT connections. There is then an enormous gap to the largest operator outside China.

Vodafone reports 244 million IoT connections, making it comfortably the largest Western cellular IoT connectivity provider. Vodafone's scale is particularly notable because its IoT business is international and extends well beyond the countries in which Vodafone operates its own mobile networks.

AT&T comes next. The operator said in March 2026 that it connects 150 million devices across major industry sectors and connects more than 80% of connected cars in the US. Berg Insight estimated AT&T's cellular IoT base at 160 million at the end of 2025. Given the difference in wording and methodology, showing this as approximately 150–160 million seems more sensible than choosing one supposedly precise number. 

India is another market where M2M connectivity is expanding rapidly. According to TRAI's August 2026 data, India had 140.50 million M2M cellular mobile connections, up from 137.70 million a month earlier. Bharti Airtel accounted for 86.06 million, representing 61.25% of the market. Reliance Jio had 27.10 million, Vodafone Idea 22.57 million and BSNL 4.78 million. That puts Airtel India comfortably in sixth place globally. Berg Insight had estimated Airtel's IoT base at 69 million at the end of 2025, so the growth during 2026 has been substantial.

The next three operators are much harder to order precisely. Berg Insight estimates that Verizon and Deutsche Telekom each had somewhere between 62 and 69 million cellular IoT connections at the end of 2025. Telefónica provides a more recent and precise number. It reported 64.739 million IoT accesses at the end of June 2026, up from 44.052 million a year earlier, an increase of 47%. Much of the increase came from Spain, where new IoT lines associated with connected roadside-assistance beacons drove particularly rapid growth.

Given the overlap between these figures and their differing reporting dates and definitions, I have grouped Verizon, Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica together as positions 7–9, rather than suggesting that we can confidently distinguish between them.

The final place is effectively a tie between KDDI and Orange. KDDI reports 60.632 million "Connected Solutions" managed connections for FY2025, with a target of 80 million by FY2028. This is a broader managed-connections KPI rather than a perfectly clean cellular IoT SIM count, so again it needs to be treated with some caution. Orange provides one of the clearer definitions. At the end of June 2026 it reported 60.491 million M2M accesses. Orange defines M2M as SIM cards dedicated to exchanging information between machines through one or more communications networks. 

The numerical difference between KDDI and Orange is tiny compared with the difference in definitions, so treating them as joint tenth is more meaningful than declaring one definitively larger than the other.

The technology underneath these connections is changing as well. Transforma Insights estimates that there were 487 million cellular-based IoT device shipments during 2025, rising to around 1.2 billion annually by 2035. In 2025, 4G accounted for 46% of shipments, while 5G mMTC accounted for 48%, mainly reflecting the huge Chinese NB-IoT market. By 2035, Transforma expects 5G mMTC to account for 64% of cellular IoT shipments and 5G non-mMTC for another 27%, while 4G falls to just 9%.

The comparison also highlights why I excluded M2M and IoT when recently looking at the world's largest mobile operators by conventional subscriber numbers. China Mobile's 1.511 billion IoT cards, Vodafone's 244 million IoT connections and Airtel India's 86 million M2M connections would substantially distort any ranking intended to show the number of people subscribing to mobile services.

It also brings us back to the question I asked in 2021. No, we did not have 50 billion IoT devices in 2020. Even today, Transforma Insights estimates the global total at around 21 billion, although it now expects the market to reach approximately 48 billion by 2035. But cellular IoT has nevertheless grown enormously. Depending on which methodology is used, the global cellular IoT base at the end of 2025 was somewhere between Transforma's 2.4 billion active devices and Berg Insight's 4.2 billion cellular connections. That gap is itself an important lesson: whenever somebody quotes an IoT number, it is worth asking exactly what is being counted.

What is beyond doubt is that IoT is now operating at extraordinary scale. China Mobile alone manages more than 1.5 billion reported IoT connections, the three Chinese operators together report more than 3 billion, and operators around the world are supporting tens or hundreds of millions of connected cars, smart meters, trackers, payment terminals and other machines.

The 50 billion prediction may have been far too optimistic on timing, but the IoT market certainly did not disappear. It just took a rather different path to the one many people imagined fifteen years ago.

Related Posts: 

• Operator Watch Blog: The World’s 10 Largest Mobile Operators by Subscriber Numbers in 2026
• Operator Watch Blog: A Billion for China and China Mobile
• Operator Watch Blog: World's Largest Mobile Networks by Data Traffic - Q1 2024
• Operator Watch Blog: 8.05 Billion Mobile Subscribers with 5.22 Billion Unique by End of 2020
• Operator Watch Blog: World's Largest Mobile Networks by Data Traffic - March 2021 

Ireland’s Mobile Market in 2026: 5G Growth, IoT Scale and a Changing Competitive Picture

Ireland has one of Europe’s most mature and competitive mobile telecommunications markets, supported by widespread 4G coverage, rapidly expanding 5G adoption and a growing number of connected devices. The country has three mobile network operators, Three Ireland, Vodafone Ireland and eir, alongside a sizeable group of mobile virtual network operators including Tesco Mobile, Lyca Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Sky Mobile and An Post Mobile.

The latest figures from Ireland’s communications regulator, ComReg, show just how quickly the market continues to evolve. At the end of the second quarter of 2026, Ireland had around 11 million mobile subscriptions when mobile broadband and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) connections were included. The number of 5G subscriptions had reached 3.3 million, increasing by 54 percent in a year. Around 79 percent of mobile subscriptions were bill pay, while an average mobile voice subscriber consumed 22.8 GB of data per month, 16 percent more than a year earlier.

Other datasets measure the market differently. GSMA Intelligence estimated that Ireland had 5.54 million cellular mobile connections at the end of 2025, equivalent to 104 percent of the population. It also classified 97.8 percent of those connections as broadband connections operating over 3G, 4G or 5G networks. The significant difference between the GSMA Intelligence and ComReg totals is largely due to definitions, particularly ComReg’s inclusion of millions of M2M subscriptions in its headline mobile market statistics.

This distinction is especially important when looking at operator market share.

According to ComReg, Three accounted for 50.2 percent of all mobile subscriptions including mobile broadband and M2M in Q2 2026. Vodafone had 26.3 percent, eir 14.6 percent, Tesco Mobile 4.5 percent, Lyca Mobile 1.5 percent, Virgin Mobile 1.4 percent, Sky Mobile 0.9 percent and An Post Mobile 0.5 percent.

However, the picture changes significantly when mobile broadband and M2M connections are excluded. In ComReg’s Q1 2026 figures, Vodafone was the largest provider of conventional mobile subscriptions with a 32.0 percent share, followed by Three at 27.6 percent and eir at 24.9 percent. Tesco Mobile had a further 8.1 percent, demonstrating that MVNOs remain an important part of the Irish retail mobile market.

The reason for Three’s very different position in the two sets of statistics is its enormous M2M and Internet of Things business. This makes Ireland an interesting example of why headline mobile market-share figures increasingly need to be treated carefully as connected cars, smart meters, industrial equipment and other IoT devices become a larger part of operator subscription bases.

+

Network performance also remains highly competitive. Opensignal’s January 2026 Mobile Network Experience report, based on measurements collected between October and December 2025, showed that no single Irish operator led across every measure.

Three recorded the highest overall Download Speed Experience at 60.9 Mbps, compared with 50.6 Mbps for eir and 43.1 Mbps for Vodafone. Three also recorded the highest 5G Download Speed at 198.9 Mbps. eir, meanwhile, performed particularly strongly in 5G availability, with Opensignal users connected to 5G 85.1 percent of the time when they had an active 5G subscription and device, compared with 72.9 percent for Three and 61.5 percent for Vodafone.

Three Ireland has continued to expand rapidly, reporting 5.6 million customer connections in the first half of 2026, an increase of 6 percent year-on-year. This figure includes Three’s substantial M2M and IoT business and therefore should not be interpreted as 5.6 million individual mobile phone users.

Three’s 5G network now reaches around 97 percent of Ireland’s population, while its 4G network covers 99.4 percent. The operator says it has invested more than €2 billion in Ireland since 2015, including approximately €1.1 billion in network and IT infrastructure. During 2026 it also completed a €1.2 million programme of 4G and 5G upgrades at locations including Croke Park, Aviva Stadium, 3Arena, Dublin Airport and Dundrum Town Centre.

The IoT market remains one of Three’s biggest differentiators. At the end of 2025, the company said it accounted for more than 80 percent of Ireland’s IoT market. Growth in connected devices has been one of the main reasons Three’s overall share of Irish mobile subscriptions has increased so dramatically.

Beyond consumer mobile services, Three continues to expand across enterprise connectivity, IoT and 5G broadband. It has also been experimenting with more advanced 5G capabilities. Three became the first Irish operator to launch a 5G Standalone trial, initially aimed at selected business customers.

eir combines its mobile business with Ireland’s largest fixed telecommunications infrastructure footprint and operates mobile services through both eir Mobile and its lower-cost GoMo brand.

At the end of the second quarter of 2026, eir reported 1.615 million mobile customers, including 1.337 million postpay customers. Its mobile customer base has continued to expand alongside its fibre broadband business. eir also had almost 900,000 fibre broadband customers, while more than 1.5 million premises could access its Fibre-to-the-Home network. Its combined FTTH and Fibre-to-the-Cabinet footprint reached approximately 2.3 million premises.

The company has undertaken a major transformation of its mobile infrastructure. Its network now comprises approximately 2,670 sites and eir reports 99 percent 5G population coverage and 99.9 percent 4G population coverage. It says approximately €250 million has been invested in developing and expanding the mobile network.

The combination of fixed broadband and mobile infrastructure gives eir a particularly strong position in converged services. Residential customers can combine fibre broadband, mobile and television, while business customers can obtain fixed connectivity, mobile services and enterprise communications from the same provider.

Vodafone Ireland remains the largest operator in the conventional mobile subscription market when M2M and mobile broadband connections are excluded. It had approximately 2.09 million mobile customers at the end of June 2026, although Vodafone’s own reporting methodology is different from ComReg’s market-share calculations.

Vodafone continues to invest heavily in its Irish infrastructure. In April 2026 the company announced a further €360 million investment programme, including €200 million for its mobile network and €160 million for digital and IT systems through to 2030. The additional mobile investment builds on the €500 million five-year network programme announced in 2023.

Vodafone reports more than 99 percent population coverage for voice, data and text and more than 99 percent 4G population coverage. Its 5G network is available across Ireland and continues to expand using a mixture of low-band and mid-band spectrum.

The company also maintains a substantial business and enterprise operation, offering mobile and fixed connectivity alongside IoT, cybersecurity, cloud communications and managed services. Vodafone Group’s international footprint also gives the Irish operation an important role in supporting multinational companies requiring connectivity across multiple countries.

Ireland is now moving beyond the initial phase of 5G deployment towards much broader adoption. With 3.3 million 5G subscriptions by June 2026, 5G is becoming a mainstream part of the Irish mobile market rather than a technology limited to early adopters.

At the same time, operators are removing older network technologies and reusing the spectrum for 4G and 5G. Vodafone began progressively switching off its 3G network during 2024, while eir begins its nationwide 3G switch-off from 1 October 2026. Older phones and equipment such as alarms, trackers, medical devices and connected vehicles may still require upgrades or replacement where they rely on 3G connectivity.

Spectrum refarming allows operators to make more efficient use of frequencies previously dedicated to older technologies. Low-band spectrum can help improve geographical and indoor coverage, while mid-band spectrum provides the additional capacity required in busy areas.

Fixed Wireless Access is also becoming an increasingly visible part of operator strategies. Both Three and Vodafone actively market 4G and 5G broadband services, providing an alternative in areas where fixed broadband may be unavailable, slow or inconvenient to install.

The enterprise market is also becoming increasingly important as the consumer mobile business matures. Ireland has a large technology, pharmaceutical, financial services and manufacturing base, creating demand for resilient connectivity, IoT, cybersecurity, cloud networking and managed communications.

The three operators approach this market from slightly different positions. Three has built an unusually large IoT business and has been experimenting with 5G Standalone services. Vodafone brings extensive international enterprise and IoT capabilities through the wider Vodafone Group, while eir can combine national fixed infrastructure, fibre and mobile connectivity.

Private 5G, industrial IoT and other advanced enterprise applications remain relatively early markets, but Ireland’s concentration of multinational companies and digitally intensive industries provides a strong environment for these services to develop.

Ireland’s mobile market is already highly mature, but its underlying composition continues to change. One of the most significant developments is the growth of M2M connectivity. More than four million M2M connections were already recorded by ComReg at the end of 2025, and this category has become large enough to fundamentally change traditional measures of mobile market share.

Three’s rise to more than half of all Irish mobile subscriptions is perhaps the clearest example. At the same time, the conventional mobile market remains considerably more balanced, with Vodafone, Three and eir all maintaining substantial customer bases and Tesco Mobile and other MVNOs providing additional competitive pressure without operating their own radio networks.

5G adoption is accelerating rapidly, mobile data usage continues to rise and 3G spectrum is being released for newer technologies. Competition is therefore increasingly about network experience, value, convergence, IoT and enterprise services rather than simply who can claim the greatest population coverage.

Perhaps the most interesting development in Ireland is that the definition of a mobile customer itself is changing. As millions of connected devices join mobile networks alongside smartphones, tablets and broadband routers, traditional subscriber numbers increasingly tell only part of the story.

Why Telefónica’s Journey to Autonomous Network Level 4 Depends on Operations

At FutureNet World 2026, Nilmar Seccomandi David, Director of Autonomous Network & Infrastructure at Telefónica, gave an interesting update on the operator's journey towards Level 4 autonomous networks.

The presentation, “Autonomous Operations: Why the Journey to AN L4 Depends on It?”, went beyond the increasingly familiar discussion about using AI in telecom networks. The more important message was that Level 4 is not something an operator achieves simply by deploying enough AI use cases. It requires a much broader transformation of network technology, operational platforms, processes and people, together with a way of measuring autonomy across the whole organisation.

Telefónica launched its Autonomous Network Journey (ANJ) programme in 2021 with its three main operating companies in Spain, Germany and Brazil. David explained that it adopted a holistic approach from the beginning, covering the main network lifecycle processes of planning, testing, deployment and operations, as well as domains including IP, transport, radio, fixed access, core and cloud.

This is important because Telefónica does not view the autonomous network programme as a collection of isolated automation projects.

The programme has four main workstreams. The first is technology transformation, including more open, softwarised and disaggregated networks as well as the removal of legacy technologies. The second is what Telefónica calls the brain, its automation platform, covering data integrity, data lakes, OSS modernisation and the platforms required to implement automation and AI.

The third is the heart, involving process redesign. David's point here was that simply automating an existing process does not necessarily capture the full benefits of automation. Processes themselves may need to be redesigned as new capabilities are introduced.

The fourth is people, including new ways of working, reskilling and creating an AI culture.

This framework is not new. In his FutureNet World presentation a year earlier, David used essentially the same four dimensions, describing them as The Network, The Brain, The Heart and People. The 2025 material already included open and softwarised networks, data and automation platforms, process redesign and organisational change.

That earlier presentation also showed Telefónica moving from conventional automation towards what it called Hyper Automation, with GenAI, agentic AI, cognitive cross-domain AI and digital twins becoming increasingly important between 2025 and 2030.

The difference in 2026 is that the discussion has become much more focused on how the operator measures progress and what autonomous operations actually look like in production.

Telefónica estimates that when the programme started five years ago, its overall autonomy level was around 1.1. It has progressed through the maturity levels year by year and closed 2025 at 3.42.

The company has now made its longer-term objectives public. It is targeting an average autonomy level of 3.75 by 2028 and Level 4 by 2030 across Spain, Brazil and Germany. Those targets formed part of Telefónica's November 2025 Capital Markets Day and its wider Transform & Grow strategy.

David made an interesting observation about the importance Telefónica now attaches to the number: autonomy level has become a KPI followed by the company's board, alongside conventional indicators such as revenue and Net Promoter Score.

That raises the obvious question: what exactly does a figure such as 3.42 mean?

This was perhaps the most useful part of the presentation.

Image: Telefónica breaks its autonomy measurement down from Group and operating-company level through network domains, sub-domains, processes and individual activities. Source: Telefónica / FutureNet World 2026

Telefónica uses the TM Forum Autonomous Networks framework as its basis, but David stressed that operators have to adapt the methodology to their own networks.

At the top level, Telefónica's Group autonomy figure consolidates the results from Spain, Brazil and Germany.

Within each operating company, the network is divided into domains such as IP, transport, radio, fixed access, core and cloud. Those can then be divided into sub-domains. Transport, for example, may include optical and microwave, while the core can include voice and packet-core functions.

Each domain is then assessed across processes such as planning, testing, deployment and operations. Those can be broken down again into individual activities. Operations, for example, includes areas such as fault and performance management.

The result is a large hierarchy of measurements which eventually rolls up into the Telefónica autonomy figure.

David's argument was that this complexity is necessary. Knowing that an operator has one, ten or even twenty impressive autonomous scenarios tells you relatively little about the autonomy of the network as a whole.

The same point was already visible in Telefónica's 2025 reporting. Its autonomy index showed progress occurring at different speeds across six network domains and multiple processes. IP and RAN were among the more advanced areas, while Core and Telco Cloud were further behind.

The 2026 results make that variation particularly clear.

Image: Telefónica's current autonomy assessment shows considerable variation between network domains and operational processes even though the consolidated Group autonomy level is 3.42. Source: Telefónica / FutureNet World 2026

The slide shows the results in two different ways.

On the left are Telefónica's three operating companies. The countries are deliberately anonymised, but the data is real. IP is the most autonomous domain in all three operating companies, while Cloud is the least autonomous.

The right-hand view breaks the assessment down by process. Even inside IP, which is the most mature overall domain, testing is less autonomous than the other main processes.

This illustrates one of the difficulties with discussions about “reaching Level 4”. An operator does not suddenly become Level 4 everywhere. Different countries, technologies and processes progress at different rates, and the overall figure can hide significant differences underneath.

Telefónica closed 2025 with 12 individual Level 4 use cases, spread across Spain, Germany and Brazil. Two were associated with planning, five with deployment and five with operations. Telefónica describes Level 4 cases as those capable of acting autonomously based on an intention provided by a human.

These include autonomous network-capacity creation, transport digital twins, autonomous IP fault resolution, 5G Core self-healing, fibre planning, software changes and multi-domain correlation.

The first Level 4 operations example David discussed was NetOptimizer, a digital twin of the O2 Germany transport network.

Image: O2 Germany's NetOptimizer uses a digital twin of the transport network for network analysis, simulation and proactive bottleneck detection. Source: Telefónica / FutureNet World 2026

NetOptimizer maintains an end-to-end representation of the German transport network and is used for analysis, simulation and bottleneck detection.

One particularly interesting capability is resilience testing. David explained that the system can periodically simulate the failure of individual links across the thousands of links in the transport network and analyse what would happen elsewhere.

Potential bottlenecks can therefore be identified before an actual failure exposes them.

The benefits shown on the presentation slide include 80% less time required for analysis, 40% fewer transport capacity issues, more than 90% fewer sites with very high capacity loading and a 5% latency improvement.

Telefónica has separately published the same figures for NetOptimizer, confirming the 80% reduction in time spent on planning, operations and network-optimisation analysis.

This is also worth noting because the automatic transcript of the presentation renders the first figure as 8%; the slide itself and Telefónica's published material make clear that the figure is 80%.

The second Level 4 example addressed IP interface flapping, where an interface repeatedly transitions between active and inactive states because of problems such as fibre attenuation, hardware faults, temperature or other instability.

Telefónica's system detects the condition, attempts to establish its cause and applies corrective action automatically. Where the problem cannot be resolved automatically, the affected port can be blocked and the appropriate field process triggered.

The company says the solution has reduced the impact of flapping on services by 70%, while removing the need for manual intervention in the closed-loop resolution process.

David then presented several other examples which are not yet Level 4 but are interesting because they demonstrate that Telefónica is not relying on a single flavour of AI.

One is Correlax in Brazil.

The starting problem was surprisingly mundane: NOC staff complained about gaps in the network inventory, which made it difficult to determine relationships between apparently separate incidents.

Rather than waiting for a perfect inventory, Telefónica applied graph techniques similar in principle to those used to establish relationships in social networks. It inferred relationships between network elements from available information and then used these relationships to correlate trouble tickets.

David said Correlax is reducing the relevant tickets by around 44%.

Another example is ATEA, an AI Factory deployed in Germany in collaboration with Google and using Gemini. One of the scenarios David described was cell-health analysis.

What had previously been a manual process involving the correlation of KPIs from multiple databases can increasingly be automated, bringing together information from different sources to analyse the condition of the network.

David also discussed rApps as a Service. Telefónica is testing an Ericsson solution using AWS which, according to the presentation, could be deployed in only a few days. The initial application involved anomaly detection, with additional agents being developed.

These examples are useful because the FutureNet World agenda specifically asked about the roles of predictive, generative and agentic AI, but the presentation suggests that this may be the wrong way to think about autonomous networks.

Telefónica is using whatever technique is appropriate to the problem: conventional automation, traditional algorithms, machine learning, graph analytics, digital twins, GenAI, rApps and increasingly AI agents.

The 2025 FutureNet World presentation made the same point in a different way. Telefónica already had more than 400 use cases spanning AI-driven network design, digital twins, capacity forecasting, GenAI document analysis, predictive maintenance, incident correlation and automated optimisation.

Its main case study that year was Vivo's Fractal system, which automated network creation using a mixture of DBSCAN clustering, Coral Reef algorithms, Telefónica's internally developed House of Cats algorithm and Dijkstra's shortest-path algorithm. The accompanying TelcoTitans report said Fractal had helped reduce mobile-site deployment time from around three months to one week.

The progression between the two FutureNet World presentations is therefore quite revealing. In 2025, the centrepiece was an advanced individual planning and network-creation use case. In 2026, the discussion is much more about spreading autonomy through the wider operating model and measuring that transformation systematically.

One of the most interesting parts of the 2026 presentation was David's reminder that AI by itself is not always enough.

Image: Telefónica's RAN energy example illustrates the limits of software optimisation: power-saving features and AI can reduce consumption significantly, but further improvements may ultimately require hardware modernisation. Source: Telefónica / FutureNet World 2026

He used RAN energy consumption as an example.

Traditional network power-saving features can already deliver substantial reductions. David suggested savings of around 20–30% compared with a network that does not use them.

AI can then improve when and how those features are activated. Depending on the implementation, David suggested that another 5–10% might be achievable.

Eventually, however, optimisation runs into the physical characteristics of the installed equipment.

At that point, modernising the hardware can potentially produce another significant improvement. David suggested that combining power-saving features and AI with newer hardware could yield an additional 20–30% and allow the energy-consumption curve to track the traffic curve much more closely.

The precise savings will clearly vary between networks, configurations and equipment generations, but the underlying message is important:

software intelligence cannot indefinitely compensate for inefficient hardware.

This is a useful counterweight to the idea that every network problem will eventually be solved by more sophisticated AI.

The final example in the presentation brought service observability into the autonomous-operations picture.

Traditional network operations tend to concentrate heavily on network KPIs. David argued that improving the network view is not sufficient: operators also need to understand the service view.

The example combines network status with service information and external factors such as weather conditions. Problems can then be analysed not only according to what is happening inside the network, but according to which services and customers are actually affected.

David said this approach is reducing Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) by around 30% and helping Telefónica prioritise which field tickets need attention first.

This may ultimately be one of the most important requirements for Level 4. A genuinely autonomous network should not merely know that a KPI has crossed a threshold or that a network element has failed. It needs enough context to understand what that failure means for the service, decide its relative importance and take the appropriate action.

There has already been further progress since the FutureNet World presentation.

Recently Telefónica provided a newer update saying it now has more than 500 AI use cases in production, with 15 already at Level 4. The targets remain Level 3.75 in 2028 and Level 4 in 2030.

That update reinforces the main message I took from David's FutureNet World presentation.

Level 4 is not something an operator installs.

It is the result of progressively changing how the network is designed, observed, deployed and operated; improving the data and OSS platforms underneath it; redesigning processes around closed-loop operation; and changing how people interact with increasingly autonomous systems.

AI is becoming increasingly important to that journey, particularly as GenAI and agentic approaches mature. But Telefónica's experience also shows that autonomous networking is much broader than AI.

It includes digital twins, conventional algorithms, closed-loop automation, observability, modern network architectures, accurate data, process redesign and, where necessary, replacing the physical infrastructure itself.

Perhaps that is why the title of the presentation was so appropriate.

The journey to Autonomous Network Level 4 ultimately depends on autonomous operations.

Related Posts: 

• Operator Watch Blog: Telecom Argentina's View of Autonomous Networks and the Road to Level 4
• Operator Watch Blog: Why Operators Must Simplify Before They Automate
• Operator Watch Blog: Automation and Data Driven Network Optimization in Swisscom’s Mobile Strategy
• Operator Watch Blog: Telefonica’s Journey Towards End-to-End Autonomous Networks
• Operator Watch Blog: What Europe’s Five Greenest Telecom Groups Are Doing Differently
• Operator Watch Blog: Telefonica's Vision of Open RAN from MWC 2022 

The World’s 10 Largest Mobile Operators by Subscriber Numbers in 2026

It sounds like a simple question, but subscriber numbers have become increasingly difficult to compare. Some operators include Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) SIMs in their reported mobile totals, while others report them separately. Some include fixed wireless access connections, and multinational groups sometimes quote subscriber numbers from associates in which they own only a minority stake.

With IoT connections now running into billions globally, simply taking the headline numbers can produce a rather misleading league table.

We have therefore attempted a slightly different comparison: the world's largest mobile operators and operator groups by mobile subscriber numbers, excluding M2M and IoT connections as far as the published data allows.

The figures use the latest information available at the end of August 2026, generally June or July 2026. They should be treated as approximate because reporting methodologies are not standardised between operators.

Rank Operator / Group Mobile subscribers excluding M2M/IoT

1         China Mobile         ~1.011 billion

2         Bharti Airtel            ~594 million

3         Reliance Jio            ~479 million

4         China Telecom        442 million

5         China Unicom         >357 million

6         MTN Group         318 million

7         América Móvil       ~300 million

8         Vodafone Group      279 million

9         Orange Group        ~261 million

10         e&                         ~245 million

China Mobile remains in a league of its own. At the end of June 2026, the operator had approximately 1.011 billion mobile customers. What makes the distinction particularly important is that China Mobile also had 1.511 billion IoT card connections. Those IoT connections are reported separately and are therefore not included in the figure above.

The scale difference is remarkable. China Mobile has more IoT connections than it has human mobile subscribers, and its mobile customer base alone is almost twice the size of the next operator group.

Bharti Airtel takes second place when its Indian and African businesses are combined. The latest TRAI figures show Airtel with around 489.5 million wireless connections in India, but approximately 84.45 million of these are M2M connections. Removing these gives just over 405 million Indian consumer mobile subscriptions. Airtel Africa reported another 189 million customers at the end of June 2026, producing a combined figure of roughly 594 million.

This illustrates why simply using operator headline subscriber numbers can be problematic. India now has 137.7 million cellular M2M connections, and TRAI explicitly states that its wireless subscriber figures include M2M connections.

The same adjustment changes the picture for Reliance Jio. TRAI reported around 506 million wireless connections for Jio at the end of July, but 26.56 million were M2M connections. That leaves approximately 479 million conventional mobile subscriptions, putting Jio comfortably in third place rather than above Airtel when Airtel's African operations are included.

Jio itself reports a much larger overall customer base of more than 533 million because its broader digital services reporting also reflects the rapid expansion of its fixed broadband and JioAirFiber businesses. This is another reason why company-level customer numbers cannot always be compared directly with mobile subscriber numbers.

The next two positions belong to China's other major state-owned operators.

China Telecom reported 442.43 million mobile subscribers at the end of June 2026, including 322.5 million 5G network subscribers. China's enormous mobile IoT population is counted separately from conventional mobile telephone users in national statistics.

China Unicom is slightly more difficult. Its 2025 annual report said that the number of mobile billing subscribers had exceeded 357 million. More recent reporting increasingly uses a much broader "connectivity subscribers" measure combining mobile, broadband, IoT and other connections, so I have retained the latest clean mobile-only figure rather than trying to derive a misleading number from the new KPI.

Africa's largest operator group, MTN, comes next. MTN reported 317.7 million active subscribers across 19 markets at the end of June 2026. More than 179 million of these were active data users.

América Móvil, owner of brands including Claro, Telcel and A1, reported 334.3 million wireless lines at the end of June. The difficulty is that this figure includes M2M subscriptions in several operations. For example, its Austria and Eastern Europe total alone includes 11.28 million A1 Digital M2M subscriptions, while Claro Brazil also reports substantial M2M additions. Once these are removed, I estimate the conventional mobile base to be around 300 million.

This estimate is necessarily less precise than the China Mobile or Vodafone figures because América Móvil does not publish a single group-wide mobile total excluding M2M.

Vodafone Group is much cleaner. Its 2026 annual report gives 279 million mobile customers while separately reporting 244 million IoT connections. This makes Vodafone one of the easiest multinational operators to compare for this exercise.

Orange reported 321.3 million mobile accesses at the end of June 2026, boosted significantly by the full consolidation of MasOrange in Spain. Its detailed KPI reporting includes M2M within parts of the mobile base, and removing those connections brings the conventional mobile total to roughly 261 million. Orange's Africa and Middle East business alone now serves around 180 million mobile customers, showing how important that region has become to the Group.

Finally comes e&, formerly Etisalat Group. Its aggregate subscriber base reached 251.5 million at the end of June 2026 following the consolidation of businesses including Telenor Pakistan and its expanded international portfolio. The headline figure contains a relatively small number of fixed subscribers as well as mobile connections, so a reasonable mobile-only estimate is around 245 million.

The bottom of the table is the least certain. Deutsche Telekom is very close to the top-ten boundary, but producing a comparable 2026 group mobile subscriber figure is now difficult. T-Mobile US changed its reporting in the first quarter of 2026 and now emphasises postpaid accounts rather than total customers. At the end of 2025 it had 142.4 million US customers, while Deutsche Telekom currently reports another 123.7 million mobile customers across Germany and its other European operations. However, the German figure explicitly includes substantial M2M SIMs, particularly automotive connections.

Depending on exactly how M2M, broadband and other non-phone connections are treated, Deutsche Telekom and e& could therefore exchange places around the tenth position.

Another operator group that can appear much larger in some rankings is Singtel. This is largely because Singtel has major investments in operators including Bharti Airtel, Telkomsel, AIS and Globe. Adding all of their subscribers to Singtel's total while also ranking those operators or groups separately would effectively count the same subscribers more than once. For this comparison, I have therefore concentrated on controlled operator businesses rather than attributing 100% of associate subscribers to their shareholders.

The exercise also highlights how dramatically the meaning of a "mobile connection" is changing.

China Mobile alone has more than 1.5 billion IoT connections. Vodafone has 244 million IoT connections, while India's M2M base has already reached almost 138 million. In many cases, an operator's total number of network connections is therefore substantially larger than the number of people actually using its mobile services.

For traditional mobile subscriber scale, however, the picture remains clear. China and India dominate the top of the global rankings, followed by large multi-country groups across Africa, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.

And China Mobile, with more than one billion conventional mobile customers before its enormous IoT business is even counted, remains comfortably the largest mobile operator in the world.

Related Posts: 

• Operator Watch Blog: The World’s Largest Cellular IoT Operators in 2026
• Operator Watch Blog: A Billion for China and China Mobile
• Operator Watch Blog: World's Largest Mobile Networks by Data Traffic - Q1 2024
• Operator Watch Blog: 8.05 Billion Mobile Subscribers with 5.22 Billion Unique by End of 2020
• Operator Watch Blog: World's Largest Mobile Networks by Data Traffic - March 2021 

Singapore's Telecoms Market Enters Its Next Phase

Singapore has one of the world's most advanced and competitive telecommunications markets. Despite its relatively small geographic area and population of around six million, the city-state consistently ranks among global leaders in mobile connectivity, fibre-broadband adoption and digital infrastructure.

DataReportal, citing GSMA Intelligence, reported that Singapore had 9.79 million cellular mobile connections in late 2025. This was equivalent to 166% of the population estimate used in its methodology. The number of connections fell by approximately 99,000, or 1%, between late 2024 and late 2025, while 99.3% were classified as mobile broadband connections.

Mobile-connection figures should not be confused with the number of individual users. Many people maintain separate personal and business subscriptions, while tablets, connected equipment and other devices may also use cellular connections. eSIM has made it easier for users to maintain multiple services.

Singapore has also completed another important transition. The three operators that previously provided 3G services, Singtel, StarHub and M1, retired those networks during 2024, freeing spectrum and resources for newer technologies. Mobile users are now effectively served through 4G and 5G networks.

A mature four-operator market

Singapore's mobile market continues to be served by four mobile network operators: Singtel, StarHub, M1 and SIMBA.

Competition in such a mature market is increasingly about more than geographic coverage. Pricing, network performance, roaming, digital customer experience, bundled services and the ability to turn network capabilities into higher-value consumer and enterprise offerings are becoming more important.

The operators also report subscriber numbers using different definitions and reporting periods. Some report customers, others subscribers, active services or individual lines. Their published totals therefore should not simply be added together to calculate precise market shares.

Singtel remains Singapore's largest telecommunications operator. At 31 March 2026, it reported approximately 4.50 million mobile customers and 686,000 fixed-broadband lines in Singapore.

Its position is supported by extensive infrastructure, a large consumer base and a broad enterprise portfolio, as well as the wider Singtel Group's operations and investments across Asia.

Singtel is now moving beyond basic 5G deployment towards more differentiated network capabilities. In March 2026, it announced an expanded collaboration with Ericsson around 5G-Advanced. Priorities include commercial end-to-end network slicing backed by service-level agreements, programmable network APIs and greater use of AI in the RAN.

StarHub is one of Singapore's three long-established integrated telecommunications operators and describes itself as having the country's number-two mobile revenue market share.

At 31 March 2026, StarHub reported 2.222 million mobile subscribers and 571,000 broadband subscribers. Its mobile subscriber base increased by 17,000 during the first quarter, although consumer mobile revenue declined year-on-year.

StarHub has progressively repositioned itself beyond conventional mobile and broadband services, with activities spanning enterprise connectivity, managed services, cloud and cybersecurity.

It also continues to increase the scale of its consumer business. On 6 August 2026, StarHub and MyRepublic announced that all MyRepublic 4G subscribers would move onto StarHub's network. MyRepublic's 5G customers were already using StarHub through an existing wholesale arrangement. StarHub linked the move to increasing scale and positioning itself for further consolidation in Singapore's telecommunications market.

StarHub also shares part of its 5G infrastructure with M1 through Antina, their network-sharing joint venture.

M1, majority-owned by Keppel, competes across consumer telecommunications, enterprise connectivity and digital services. It serves more than two million customers and has increasingly emphasised enterprise and industry-focused 5G services.

Its activities include private and dedicated 5G, maritime connectivity, industrial applications, network slicing and edge computing. M1 has also introduced commercial 5G RedCap services for enterprises, targeting IoT applications that do not require the capabilities or cost profile of full-featured 5G devices. 

M1's ownership and strategic direction have, however, become one of the most interesting aspects of Singapore's telecom market in 2026.

SIMBA, formerly TPG Telecom Singapore, is the fourth network operator and has been one of the strongest sources of price competition in the market.

At 31 January 2026, SIMBA reported approximately 1.412 million monthly paid active mobile services, up 13% over the preceding half-year. Its broadband business had also expanded to about 46,000 active services.

SIMBA's growth demonstrates that there is still room for subscriber disruption even in a highly penetrated market. Its challenge now is to translate that growth into a sustainable competitive position as Singapore shifts towards standalone 5G and competitors respond through lower-cost brands, MVNO partnerships and consolidation.

The M1-SIMBA deal collapses, but consolidation remains on the agenda

One of the biggest developments in Singapore telecoms over the past year was SIMBA's proposed acquisition of M1's telecommunications business. The transaction would have significantly reshaped the market, but it did not proceed.

In May 2026, IMDA suspended its assessment of the proposed consolidation after saying it had learnt that SIMBA could have been using radio-frequency bands that had not been assigned to it to provide mobile services. The regulator began investigating the matter.

The acquisition agreement subsequently terminated and the regulatory application was withdrawn. The suspension itself should not be interpreted as a final finding of wrongdoing.

Importantly, the collapse of the transaction has not removed consolidation from the industry's agenda. Keppel said in July that it had established a three-year plan to strengthen M1's profitability and competitiveness and maximise its strategic value in any future industry consolidation. The plan targets S$70 million in annual run-rate cost savings by 2028, with S$10 million targeted by the end of 2026. Keppel continues to include M1 Telco in its non-core portfolio for divestment. 

At the same time, StarHub's decision to bring all MyRepublic mobile subscribers onto its network shows consolidation taking place through network, wholesale and brand arrangements even without a merger between two of the four infrastructure operators.

The structure of Singapore's market therefore remains one to watch.

Singapore moves beyond the initial 5G rollout

Perhaps the clearest sign that Singapore's telecom market has entered a new phase is the transition from simply building 5G coverage to making fuller use of standalone 5G.

By mid-2026, Singapore's operators had achieved nationwide 5G Standalone coverage. The migration away from Non-Standalone architecture, where 5G radio still depends partly on 4G infrastructure, has progressed at different speeds by operator.

StarHub switched off its 5G NSA network on 31 May 2026, while M1 said all its 5G sites were operating on standalone architecture. Singtel still retained a small proportion of customers on the older NSA architecture in late July, even though its nationwide SA network was already well established.

This matters because standalone architecture provides the foundation for capabilities such as network slicing, more flexible service assurance, advanced IoT and increasingly programmable networks. The commercial question is now whether operators can convert those capabilities into services that customers are prepared to pay for.

Independent network measurements show that the operators are not delivering identical experiences. In Opensignal's July 2026 Singapore Mobile Network Experience report, Singtel won the 5G Availability category with users connected to an active 5G signal for 79.9% of the time measured. StarHub recorded 70%, M1 67% and SIMBA 31.4%.

These figures are not measures of geographic coverage. Instead, they indicate how often Opensignal's users with suitable devices and subscriptions were actually connected to 5G. The distinction becomes increasingly important now that headline coverage is no longer enough to differentiate operators.

Private 5G and enterprise connectivity

Enterprise connectivity remains one of the most important potential growth areas for Singapore's operators. Government agencies, operators and technology companies have been testing and deploying private or dedicated 5G solutions in sectors including maritime operations, manufacturing, smart estates, transport and other connected infrastructure.

Potential applications include robotics, automated vehicles, industrial monitoring, remote operations, connected equipment, video analytics and real-time data processing.

M1's introduction of commercial RedCap services and Singtel's push towards commercially enforceable network slicing illustrate how the enterprise proposition is evolving from simply providing private coverage towards differentiated connectivity for particular applications.

However, the challenge remains commercial rather than purely technical. Many private 5G and edge-computing projects remain trials, targeted deployments or industry-specific implementations. Singapore's advanced infrastructure provides an excellent environment for such applications, but operators still need to demonstrate repeatable business cases and sustainable recurring revenues.

Fibre is moving towards 10 Gbps

The next phase is not limited to mobile networks. Singapore is also upgrading its Nationwide Broadband Network to support speeds of up to 10 Gbps. IMDA has committed up to S$100 million to the programme, and more than half a million households are expected to sign up for and benefit from higher speeds by 2028.

Commercial competition has already moved in this direction, with 10 Gbps residential broadband services and Wi-Fi 7 increasingly used in premium packages. SIMBA's entry into fixed broadband has also added another aggressive competitor to this part of the market.

As with 5G, the interesting question is not simply how much speed can be delivered, but which services will make practical use of the additional capacity.

Cybersecurity becomes a strategic telecom issue

Singapore's advanced digital infrastructure also makes the resilience and security of its telecommunications networks particularly important.

In February 2026, Singapore's Cyber Security Agency and IMDA disclosed details of Operation CYBER GUARDIAN, the country's largest coordinated cyber incident response operation to date. The authorities said that advanced persistent threat actor UNC3886 had conducted a deliberate campaign targeting all four major Singapore operators: Singtel, StarHub, M1 and SIMBA.

The operation involved more than 100 cyber defenders across government agencies and the operators and lasted for more than eleven months. UNC3886 obtained unauthorised access to parts of telecom networks and exfiltrated a small amount of primarily network-related technical data. However, the authorities said there was no evidence that sensitive or personal customer records had been accessed or exfiltrated, and no evidence that telecommunications services had been disrupted.

The incident is an important reminder that telecom competition increasingly includes resilience, cybersecurity and operational capability alongside speed, coverage and price.

Smart Nation, AI and the wider digital ecosystem

Singapore's Smart Nation strategy and highly coordinated digital infrastructure policies continue to provide favourable conditions for telecommunications innovation.

The country combines extensive fibre infrastructure, nationwide 5G, major data-centre and cloud operations, subsea cable connectivity, a sophisticated cybersecurity ecosystem and close collaboration between government, operators, technology companies and research institutions.

Operators are increasingly applying AI and machine learning to areas such as network optimisation, predictive maintenance, cybersecurity, fraud detection, customer service and capacity management. At the same time, cloud and edge partnerships allow them to combine connectivity with compute, storage, security and data services.

This changes the role of a telecom operator. The long-term opportunity is not simply to sell another mobile subscription, but to become part of the digital infrastructure used by enterprises to run applications, automate operations and manage data securely. Whether operators capture a meaningful share of that value remains an open question.

Market outlook

Singapore's telecom market is therefore entering a different stage of development.

The initial nationwide 5G rollout is largely complete. The three legacy 3G networks are gone. Standalone 5G is becoming the normal architecture rather than an additional feature. Fibre is moving towards 10 Gbps. The focus is shifting towards 5G-Advanced, network slicing, RedCap, enterprise connectivity, AI-enabled operations, cybersecurity and differentiated digital services. 

At the same time, competitive pressure remains intense. SIMBA continues to grow and compete aggressively on value. StarHub is building scale through its brands, wholesale relationships and MyRepublic. Singtel is using its network leadership to push towards more programmable and differentiated 5G services. Keppel is restructuring M1 while openly keeping future industry consolidation in view. 

The failed SIMBA-M1 transaction therefore may not have been the end of Singapore's consolidation story. It may simply have delayed it.

Singapore's compact geography, regulatory environment and highly developed digital infrastructure make it an unusually useful market in which to observe what happens after nationwide 5G coverage has been achieved.

The next competition will not be about which operator can claim to have 5G. It will be about who can make the most effective commercial use of it.

Related Posts: 

• Operator Watch Blog: Building and Scaling AI the Cloud Native Way at Singtel
• Operator Watch Blog: SIMBA Telecom to Acquire M1 in Singapore’s First Major Consolidation
• Private Networks Technology Blog: Singtel’s 5G Powers the Transformation of Singapore’s Tuas Mega Port
• Operator Watch Blog: Singtel Surpasses 95% Nationwide 5G Standalone Coverage in Singapore
• Connectivity Technology Blog: StarHub's SmartPTT Push-to-talk over Cellular (PTToC) Solution
• Operator Watch Blog: Singapore is a 5G leader in Southeast Asia 

What Europe’s Five Greenest Telecom Groups Are Doing Differently

Energy efficiency and sustainability have moved from being specialist environmental topics to strategic priorities for telecom operators. Energy typically represents around 3% to 5% of operators’ operating expenditure, and sometimes considerably more. Electricity prices can also change rapidly because of geopolitical conflict, extreme weather, grid constraints and competition for renewable energy from data centres.

The scale of the challenge is significant. According to the Telecom Energy & Sustainability (TES) research from MTN Consulting and Téral Research, telecom operators consumed 340.6 TWh of energy in 2024. Only around 23% came from renewable sources, although this was an improvement from 10% in 2019. When Scope 3 emissions from equipment, suppliers and the wider value chain are included, the sector generated approximately 342 million metric tonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions.

The TES study analyses 66 telecom operators representing approximately 85% of the global market. One of its rankings compares market-based Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions against company revenue. This is important because it measures the total reported carbon footprint relative to the size of the business, rather than simply rewarding the largest purchaser of renewable electricity.

On this measure, the five leading European telecom groups in 2024 were: 

A note on acquisitions and reporting boundaries: The ranking is based on 2024 reported data and therefore reflects each group’s reporting perimeter during that period. Acquisitions, disposals and infrastructure spin-outs can materially change subsequent energy and emissions profiles. Swisscom’s figures, for example, reflect the reporting perimeter before Vodafone Italia is incorporated into the TES analysis on a fully consolidated basis.

For comparison, the average across European operators was approximately 105 MT CO₂e per $1 million of revenue, while the global average was around 192. Seven of the worldwide top ten were European groups, with Deutsche Telekom and Tele2 also making the list.

These figures should not be treated as a perfect comparison. Group structure, geography, network ownership, leased infrastructure and the quality of Scope 3 reporting can all affect the results. Nevertheless, the leading companies provide some useful lessons about how sustainability can be embedded into telecom strategy.

Swisscom leads today, but Vodafone Italia changes the future picture

Swisscom has the strongest overall TES position among the operators assessed, receiving a five-star Leader rating. Its 2024 energy intensity was 43.2 MWh per $1 million of revenue, while its market-based Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions intensity was only 0.87 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent per $1 million. Renewables accounted for 90.4% of reported energy use.

What distinguishes Swisscom is not only its energy performance. The company has integrated financial and environmental reporting, placing sustainability alongside revenue, investment and other measures used to evaluate the business.

However, there is an important qualification. Swisscom completed its acquisition of Vodafone Italia in December 2024, and the current TES figures largely reflect the earlier reporting perimeter of Swisscom and Fastweb. The enlarged group will have a different energy and emissions profile.

Vodafone Italia’s energy sourcing includes a greater contribution from conventional and nuclear generation. Although nuclear electricity is low-carbon, it is not classified as renewable under the TES methodology. When the TES analysis is updated to reflect the fully consolidated group, Swisscom’s reported renewable share is therefore expected to decline and its emissions intensity could increase unless the acquired operations are brought into alignment with the group’s existing renewable-energy strategy.

The Italian operation may consequently become the biggest test of Swisscom’s sustainability leadership. Extending Fastweb’s renewable procurement programmes across the combined Fastweb and Vodafone Italia footprint could help the group defend its position.

This illustrates a wider lesson about sustainability rankings. A company can improve through network modernisation and renewable procurement, but its reported profile can also change abruptly following an acquisition. The same effect can happen in reverse when operators sell energy-intensive assets such as tower portfolios.

Telefónica connects sustainability with financing and network investment

Telefónica’s approach demonstrates how environmental commitments can be incorporated into corporate financing. In early 2026, the group raised €1.75 billion through a green hybrid bond. The funds were intended to support network transformation, energy-efficient modernisation, renewable-energy projects and digital services that help customers lower their energy consumption.

This matters because telecom networks require continuous investment. Attaching environmental criteria to financing can influence which programmes receive funding and how their outcomes are measured.

Telefónica is also incorporating energy efficiency into major technology procurement. Telefónica Germany highlighted energy efficiency when announcing a five-year agreement to deploy Nokia’s AirScale radio platform. Its operations outside Europe are following a similar direction. Movistar Chile entered a long-term renewable-energy agreement, while Telefónica Mexico arranged to obtain part of its electricity from a solar project.

Approximately 86% of Telefónica’s energy was classified as renewable in the TES data. More importantly, the group is applying its sustainability priorities across multiple operating companies rather than limiting them to its European headquarters.

Proximus is turning energy management into a software capability

Proximus shows that sustainability is not only about buying renewable electricity. It is also about understanding where, when and why energy is being consumed.

The Belgian group has developed an application called Energy Box, which combines data analytics, real-time energy-market information and artificial intelligence. The platform is intended to improve energy planning across buildings and mobile sites while making better use of intermittent renewable sources such as solar and wind.

This is an increasingly important capability. Networks cannot simply switch everything off when electricity becomes expensive or renewable generation falls. Operators must understand traffic patterns, service requirements, battery capacity, equipment performance and local energy conditions before making changes.

AI and automation could eventually allow sites, data centres and other facilities to adjust energy use dynamically. The same capabilities could help operators participate in electricity demand-response programmes or use network batteries as part of virtual power plants.

Proximus also illustrates the green-enablement opportunity. The skills and platforms developed to manage its own facilities can potentially be offered to enterprise customers facing similar energy-management challenges.

Liberty Global is investing directly in energy generation

Most operators purchase electricity from utilities, sign power purchase agreements or buy renewable-energy certificates. Liberty Global is going further by investing directly in renewable-energy development.

Its clean-energy business, egg Power, raised £400 million in debt financing in January 2026 to support large-scale renewable projects across Europe. At the time, around 250 MW of solar and wind capacity was under construction or development, with plans to expand the portfolio.

This approach can provide more than environmental benefits. Direct investment in generation can offer greater certainty over long-term energy supply and cost, particularly as data centres and other large electricity users compete for renewable capacity.

Liberty Global obtained approximately 81.5% of its energy from renewable sources in 2024. It was also among the most energy-efficient operators in the wider TES analysis.

Some of this performance may reflect Liberty Global’s corporate and asset structure, so it should not be compared directly with a traditional integrated operator without qualification. Even so, its willingness to act as an energy investor rather than only an energy customer is significant.

Telia combines renewable electricity with transparency about Scope 3

Telia had the highest renewable-energy ratio among these five groups, at approximately 94.6%. It procures fossil-free electricity across its operating markets and has also emphasised the use of energy-efficient network equipment.

The company has given sustainability unusual prominence in its financial communications. Its results presentations and annual reporting discuss environmental performance alongside traditional financial and operational metrics.

Perhaps more importantly, Telia has been willing to acknowledge where it is falling short. It disclosed that it had not achieved one of its targets relating to the proportion of suppliers with emissions targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.

That is an important admission because renewable electricity mainly reduces Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. For many leading European operators, the majority of the remaining footprint is now in Scope 3. This includes network equipment, handsets, construction, logistics, leased infrastructure and other supply-chain activities.

Telia’s recent network decisions also highlight the connection between sustainability and modernisation. When announcing the deployment of a cloud-native 5G Standalone core and additional RAN capacity across its Nordic and Baltic operations, the company identified energy efficiency as one of the drivers.

Corporate restructuring can change the numbers

Energy and emissions rankings are influenced not only by operational improvements but also by changes in corporate structure.

An acquisition can bring a large network with a different electricity mix, equipment base and emissions profile into the group. Conversely, selling towers, data centres or other energy-intensive infrastructure can make an operator’s direct Scope 1 and Scope 2 figures appear significantly better.

The environmental impact does not necessarily disappear. When an operator sells towers and leases them back, some or much of the associated footprint may shift from its direct emissions into Scope 3, depending on the reporting boundary and lease arrangements. In principle, the operator remains connected to those emissions even though it no longer owns the infrastructure.

This makes Scope 3 reporting especially important. A ranking focused only on direct emissions may reward asset disposal rather than genuine decarbonisation. Investors and customers therefore need to examine reporting boundaries, acquisitions, disposals and leased infrastructure alongside headline emissions reductions.

Concluding Lessons

The five groups are not following exactly the same strategy, but several common themes emerge.

First, they are treating sustainability as a senior-management and financial issue. It appears in annual reports, earnings presentations, financing decisions and investment priorities.

Second, they are moving beyond the simplest form of renewable-energy purchasing. Long-term power purchase agreements, direct generation, batteries and investment in new renewable projects can provide greater additionality and more predictable energy costs than certificates alone.

Third, network modernisation remains essential. More efficient radio equipment, fibre replacing copper, cloud-native platforms, intelligent sleep modes and the retirement of legacy networks can all reduce energy consumption. Buying green electricity does not remove the need to lower the amount of electricity consumed.

Fourth, procurement is becoming one of the most important sustainability tools. Scope 3 accounts for most of the telecom sector’s carbon footprint, and a large part of it comes from purchased equipment and services. Operators therefore need credible environmental information from vendors and must make emissions performance part of supplier selection.

Finally, some operators are looking beyond their own footprint. Green-enablement services can help customers manage buildings, transport, energy systems and industrial processes more efficiently. This could turn sustainability from a cost and compliance requirement into a source of new revenue.

Europe benefits from mature renewable-energy markets, stronger disclosure requirements and growing pressure from investors and regulators. Those advantages cannot always be reproduced in other regions. Operators with large numbers of off-grid sites, unreliable electricity supplies or limited access to renewable generation face very different challenges.

However, most operators participate in the same global equipment and technology supply chains. They can select more efficient infrastructure, demand credible emissions data, use energy performance in procurement, modernise legacy networks and give sustainability greater management attention.

The key lesson from Europe’s five leading groups is that environmental performance is not being delivered through one flagship project. It comes from combining reporting, financing, procurement, network design, energy sourcing, automation and supplier engagement.

Sustainability is becoming part of how these companies operate, rather than simply something they report once a year.

The data and examples in this post are based on the Telecom Energy & Sustainability research service, a collaboration between MTN Consulting and Téral Research. The ranking uses 2024 market-based Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions divided by company revenue. Figures apply to operator groups and should not be interpreted as rankings of individual national networks.

For more details, get in touch at TES(at)3g4g.co.uk