Telecom Connectivity Revenues Grew by 4 Percent in 2025

The global connectivity market, spanning mobile, fixed broadband, and fixed voice, reached $333 billion in 4Q25, representing a 5% year-on-year growth, according to Omdia. Full-year revenues totaled $1.3 trillion in 2025, up 4% YoY growth.

The results highlight ongoing challenges for the telecom industry, which remains reliant on a slow-growing core business while still working to establish new revenue streams. 5G continues its strong growth trajectory, reaching 3bn connections globally and growing 34% YoY. While still behind 4G, which stands at 8.3 billion connections, 5G adoption is accelerating rapidly. Asia remains the largest market, accounting for 69% of global 5G connections.

Fixed broadband connections reached 1.6 billion in 2025, with FTTx broadband continuing to dominate as the leading technology, surpassing 1.169 billion connections, and growing 7% annually. India overtook the United States to become the leading 5G FWA market in the world, with 14.5 million connections compared to 13.9 million in the United States.

The global ranking of telecoms operators by connectivity revenues continues to be dominated by operators from the United States and China, which together account for eight out of the top ten positions. The remaining two operators are based in Japan. Global CAPEX totaled $303 billion in 2025. Although this represents a 2% year-on-year decline, it marks an improvement from the 3.5% decline recorded in 2024.

”Overall, the 2025 results show that the telecom industry’s core business remains highly relevant, but is facing strong headwinds, including slow growth, while the sector has yet to realize meaningful returns from investments in new technologies,” said Ari Lopes, Omdia Practice Leader for Service Provider Markets.