Global telecom connectivity market
Omdia: Global telecom connectivity market hit $333 billion in Q4 2025 for 5% YoY growth
Market research firm Omdia (owned by Informa) reports the global telecom connectivity market reached reached $333 billion in Q4 2025, representing a 5% year-on-year (YoY) growth. Full year revenues came in at $1.3 trillion in 2025, representing a 4% YoY growth.
5G connections exceeded 3 billion and and growing 34% YoY, with Asia being the largest market, accounting for 69% of global 5G connections. By comparison 4G stands at 8.3 billion connections. Asia remains the largest 5G market, accounting for 69% of all global 5G connections.
Fixed broadband connections reached 1.6bn in 2025, with FTTx broadband continuing to dominate as the leading technology, surpassing 1.169bn connections, and growing 7% annually. In Q4 2025 India overtook the United States to become the leading 5G FWA market in the world, with 14.5m connections compared to 13.9m in the United States.
The report surmises the results highlight ongoing challenges for the telecom industry, in that it “remains reliant on a slow growing core business while still working to establish new revenue streams.” While 5G FWA in India and IoT growth offer new opportunities, operators face challenges due to reliance on slow-growing core revenue streams.
“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.
Omdia says the global ranking of telecom 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. According to Perplexity.ai, these are the top 10 telecom operators by revenue:
Top 10 by revenue
Note that Perplexity.ai’s top 10 ranking differs from Omdia’s which states China and the U.S. account for eight telcos (which we assume are: China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile US, Charter Communications) with Japan at two telcos (which we assume are: NTT and Softbank).
References:
https://www.telecoms.com/5g-6g/5g-surpasses-3-billion-connections
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