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What will the world of connectivity look like in 2026? What changes can we expect? Comarch Communications explores these questions and more.
Rajmund Zieliński, Comarch S.A.
Strategic shifts defining communications landscape in 2026
The hyper-enthusiasm phase with artificial intelligence is officially over. In 2026, the communications sector is no longer impressed by naturally sounding chatbots and AI-generated images; rather, it asks whether AI can fix a network outage without waking up an engineer. This year is about moving from experimentation to industrial-grade execution, where ROI is king and transparency is non-negotiable. What are the specific pillars of this transformation? Comarch Communications has answers.
For the last few years, the technology industry has focused on making AI sound more human and capable of seemingly natural conversation, but customers have grown weary of "empathetic" interfaces that lack the power to actually solve problems.
Because of that, agentic AI with native access to communications service providers’ systems is becoming the new standard. Operators gain a system capable of autonomously resetting ports or provisioning services in real time, rather than just offering apologies, and customers feel that their needs are being met.
However, autonomy creates anxiety. Operators cannot afford to trust systems that make opaque decisions in the core functions of their networks, particularly in critical infrastructure. This is why AI explainability becomes just as important as agency. Every autonomous action – from rerouting traffic to resetting ports – must include an automated audit trail. If the algorithm can't explain why it made a decision, it shouldn’t be allowed to touch the core systems of the network.
The same is true of AI algorithms provided by third-party companies, which can potentially access sensitive data. In 2026, telcos, connectivity-driven businesses demand full control over the AI models and data that they use. It’s about ensuring that your organization’s intelligence resides within your jurisdiction and on your terms, preventing vendor lock-in and ensuring long-term resilience.
The era of the monolithic operator doing everything from placing masts to selling SIM cards is ending. To unlock capital for 6G and 5G Advanced, the market is embracing a layered architecture. Firstly, TowerCos manage passive infrastructure, such as power systems and masts. They are becoming green energy hubs, managing renewable energy and battery storage to guarantee uptime as a premium service. Secondly, NetCos, focusing on wholesale connectivity, will be mainly driven by enabling the sale of guaranteed performance tiers to specialized industries, such as healthcare. And finally, ServCos are evolving into agile, software-oriented, customer-facing retailers that can enter and exit niche markets without significant investments, focusing purely on the digital experience.
Progressing digitization makes the offered services more complex, personalized, and therefore more difficult to charge for. Industries such as Energy and Logistics are realizing that flat fees don't work in the modern world and are seeking billing solutions that can accommodate their needs.
To address this complexity, these industries are adopting telco-grade charging engines to manage bi-directional energy flows (prosumers) and EV roaming, for example. While the underlying logic is similar, telco-grade engines provide the necessary scale and real-time flexibility that traditional energy billing systems currently lack.
Telco BSS (Business Support System) platforms have proven effective in billing complex services for decades. Now, they are the perfect fit for other sectors, and we are seeing rapid adoption across the utility landscape.
We used to treat satellite connections as specialized technology for expanding network coverage in remote areas. In 2026, the distinction between "terrestrial" and "non-terrestrial" is vanishing for the consumer.
Evidence of this shift is everywhere. Air France has deployed Starlink across its entire fleet, turning in-flight Wi-Fi from a luxury add-on into a basic expectation. Meanwhile, Europe is securing its strategic independence through the IRIS² program and major state-backed investments in Eutelsat, ensuring that this critical infrastructure remains under local jurisdiction.
With multi-orbit architectures and the integration of satellite capability into standard 5G workflows, connectivity from space is becoming an invisible, always-on layer of the network. Soon, customers will not even need to think about it. It will be ubiquitous, drastically reducing the number of 'no signal' zones, making ubiquitous connectivity the new baseline for global commerce.
AI means not only automating network processes and processing data that is already in the system. Thanks to advanced Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing (NLP), manual data entry will be replaced with visual analysis. Instead of filling out forms, a technician can simply photograph infrastructure elements such as splice closures, which the AI then scans to recognize components and verify that the installation meets quality standards. This system automatically generates "As-Built" documentation and updates network inventory in real time, effectively eliminating administrative bottlenecks and ensuring a "first-time-right" approach that drastically reduces operational costs.
These points only scratch the surface of the technical and commercial overhaul happening right now. How do you implement graph-based network topology for 6G? What will the modernization of critical infrastructure imply for the industry?
