Three Telecommunications IT Challenges to Conquer in 2025

Prepare for some of the largest challenges in telecom IT and enter 2025 ready to win.

Sometimes the telecommunications industry shapes the path of technological growth and innovation. Other times, emerging trends outside the field force providers to adapt their offerings and even their entire infrastructures. Put the two together and 2025 promises an endless amount of telecommunications IT challenges for providers to overcome.

Here are three IT blockers the industry’s forward thinkers will be focusing on for the foreseeable future.

Challenge 1: Operationalizing Generative AI

With a wealth of unique data and uses ranging from customer care to network optimization to fraud detection, telecommunications providers have the assets and internal/customer-facing use cases needed to achieve great success with generative AI. A report from the Deloitte Center for Technology, Media, and Telecommunications states that providers who have spent the first half of the decade watching technology mature will now invest heavily to bring the concepts they’ve developed to life.

However, getting telecom providers’ sprawling structured and unstructured data collections AI-ready will not be as easy as flipping a switch or hiring a few new faces. Incumbents with large amounts of data housed or touched by legacy systems, for instance, will likely struggle with three specific needs:

• Developing processes to sanitize and collect the data and ensuring those processes can be integrated with the generative AI tools the business develops or otherwise embraces
• Ensuring the way the AI uses the data does not run afoul of privacy laws or internal privacy policies
• Sourcing the hard-to-find human expertise needed to bridge the gap between legacy systems and AI-based innovations despite a worsening IT skills gap

The data telecoms create is invaluable, but providers have historically struggled to monetize it to its full potential. Stakeholders are keen to adopt generative AI despite the challenges because it poses a substantial opportunity to right the course. Instead of letting it slip by, expect industry leaders to establish independent software maintenance partnerships that can help them integrate trusted current systems with the new technologies they bring onboard.

Challenge 2: High-Stake Privacy and Cybersecurity Needs

The July 2024 AT&T breach, which came from a comparatively small oversight in the supply chain and affected some 110 million users, provided a stark reminder that potential major incidents are always lurking around the corner. Just as concerning, this ongoing telecommunications IT challenge often results in customer privacy being diminished.

Events like the AT&T breach and 2021’s Log4Shell incident also illustrate that reactive security practices, such as waiting on a patch to mitigate a newly discovered vulnerability, work best when paired with proactive measures that consider the entire software estate’s context.

In an industry still reliant on time-tested, on-premises technologies like IBM mainframes, plans must account for older systems that still significantly contribute to business processes.

Telecoms seem to be warming up to this message, and they’re increasingly willing to look at cybersecurity strategies beyond patch management. As the second half of the decade carries on, providers will seek outside cybersecurity help for on-premises IBM and VMware as they search for more ways to hit a continually moving target.

Challenge 3: Economic Volatility and Increased Competition

The 2020s have seen drastic competitive changes in many subsets of the telecommunications industry. Increased demand and widespread adoption of products like fixed 5G home- and office-based connectivity push existing industry players to fight for customers in new ways, and improved technologies such as the reemerging satellite internet market have injected the field with even more consumer options.

Global economic instability also remains an unwanted presence across the telecom world. Necessary expansions made during the peak of the pandemic have now become a financial albatross for many providers as the market returns to a baseline, and prices around the industry have been on an upward trend despite escalating price sensitivity from customers.

Novel competition and a fluctuating economy are nothing new to the telecom industry, but new approaches are essential to overcoming both issues, particularly in an era where capital-heavy AI projects offer few opportunities to cut costs.

To stop the bleeding without slowing innovation, more telecommunication leaders will need to adopt IT cost optimization practices and partnerships that reduce spending on existing software assets – a trend that will only grow as more companies come to see the significant potential savings at play.

Explore digital strategies beyond patch management. Watch the Effective Cybersecurity Strategies: Going Beyond Patch Management webinar today.