Unlocking the future of telecoms with programmable networks and customer control

Author:
Roberta Castle, CRO & Co-Founder

The Future of Connectivity Lies in Customer Control

Over the past decade, we’ve seen cloud computing redefine the infrastructure landscape, providing end customers with unprecedented control, flexibility, and choice. Fixed-line connectivity has followed suit, with software-defined networks (SDN) delivering granular control over provisioning and performance.

Yet, there’s one critical area that continues to lag behind: mobile and cellular services. 

The Problem: A Legacy of Control

Mobile services are still controlled by a small number of dominant vendors and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), who tightly manage access to cellular infrastructure, provisioning, and policies.

This closed environment makes it difficult for customers to build scalable, flexible, or programmable mobile services on their terms – limiting innovation.

While efforts such as the CAMARA project (a joint initiative by the GSMA and Linux Foundation) aim to address this through open APIs for network capabilities, the underlying control still resides with the MNOs. CAMARA APIs offer promising use cases, but access to these capabilities remains gated by commercial and regulatory priorities.

It’s fair to say the telecom sector hasn’t yet had its AWS moment, where infrastructure truly becomes a building block for innovation.

History shows openness breeds growth – The MVNO Case Study

This isn’t the first time the telecom world has faced this kind of crossroads.

The emergence of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) in the early 2000s introduced a level of commercial openness into the market. MVNOs brought fresh business models, niche offerings, and new customer segments—all while driving additional traffic and revenue to the underlying MNOs.

Instead of stealing customers from established providers, MVNOs brought new users into the mobile market.

Now, many of those same MVNOs are evolving. Larger players are looking to move up the stack, gaining deeper access and integrating with global support systems like ServiceNow and others. This allows them to offer end-to-end services that go beyond basic connectivity, spanning provisioning, billing, diagnostics, and even compliance workflows.

The takeaway? When MNOs enable innovation rather than control it, everyone benefits.

The need for a new approach: Aggregation & Migration

Today’s enterprise customers, especially in IoT and global mobility, need more than just SIM cards and static plans. They need the ability to aggregate multiple networks and providers for resilience, and the power to migrate between them for agility.

With a programmable API-driven model:

  • Aggregation: Enterprises can combine services from multiple MNOs or virtual network providers, creating redundant and resilient mobile connectivity across regions and use cases. This is particularly valuable in IoT, where global deployments often face inconsistent service levels or pricing.

  • Migration: With programmable interfaces, businesses gain the ability to move between providers as needed—just like shifting workloads from AWS to Azure. This dramatically reduces vendor lock-in and opens the door for cost optimisation, regulatory compliance, and service innovation.

This mirrors how enterprises use multi-cloud strategies today—optimising for cost, performance, and regulatory compliance.

The Opportunity: Software-Defined Telecom

The MNOs and vendors embracing this future are already seeing the benefits. Leaders like T-Mobile US and Rakuten Mobile are investing in fully virtualized and cloud-native network infrastructures. These architectures allow for more responsive service delivery, improved operational efficiency, and ultimately, customer-driven innovation.

By supporting API-first services, they:

  • Enable real-time SIM provisioning
  • Allow network slicing and dynamic QoS adjustments
  • Provide diagnostics and insights directly to the customer
  • Still meet regulatory and compliance needs

This is not a radical idea—it’s the logical evolution of telecom, mirroring what we’ve already seen with compute, storage, and networking in the cloud.

It’s time to unlock control and embrace collaboration

The industry must stop fearing the loss of control and start embracing the opportunity of enablement.

As MVNOs showed, opening up infrastructure can create entirely new revenue streams. And with the next wave of innovation depending on programmable, composable, mobile connectivity, the need for change is more urgent than ever.

MNOs must choose whether to cling on to legacy controls, risking irrelevance or embrace enablement and become central to digital transformation. 

It’s time for the telecom industry to have its cloud moment. The biggest rewards will go to those who enable access, flexibility, and control – not just connectivity