• It’s been another year of major developments in the telecom sector, heavily influenced, of course, by AI
• Here are the articles that were read the most during 2025
• Nokia, Intel, Nvidia, SK Telecom and Vodafone feature in the first selection of our most popular articles of the year

It’s been another year of major developments in the digital service provider (DSP) networking and services sector – anyone who went on a digital detox holiday for more than 24 hours will have missed multiple headlines about major AI infrastructure developments. 

But it’s not all about AI, of course. So which of our written articles attracted your attention the most during the past 12 months? Let’s take a look at the first half of our top 10 most popular news items…

10. Nokia taps former Intel exec for new tech, AI role

17 September 2025: In a revamp of its corporate structure, Nokia created two new corporate units – the Technology and AI Organization (TAO), headed up by former Intel AI and datacentre executive Pallavi Mahajan, and the Corporate Development Organization (CDO) led by former HPE executive Konstanty Owczarek. Both had previously worked with Nokia CEO Justin Hotard in their previous tech sector roles. Hotard noted at the time: “To succeed in the AI supercycle, we need to focus on where we can drive differentiation through our core technologies, strengthen our capabilities in security and AI, and maximise the value of partnerships in our ecosystem. Having a dedicated technology and AI organisation will be an important asset for us and our customers.” Now the ‘AI supercycle’ is constantly referenced by Nokia, which is pushing hard to be at the heart of AI infrastructure-related developments, deployments and investments. Read the full story about Mahajan’s appointment. 
 

9. SK Telecom sheds subs in wake of disastrous data breach

30 April 2025: It’s been a tough year for SK Telecom, which suffered a disastrous security breach and data leak that occurred on 19 April and was subsequently unveiled a few days later. Less than two weeks after the breach, it had already lost about 70,000 mobile customers and the months that followed brought further customer and financial losses, just as the company was in full flow with its AI strategy. Ultimately, it lost 840,000 customers, introduced an Accountability and Commitment Program (which includes a $514m investment in new security systems and processes), was fined by regulators, forced to cancel any contract termination fees until the end of this year for customers that decide to jump ship, and replaced its CEO. SK Telecom will be willing 2026 to come as quickly as possible. Read the full story about its initial security breach fallout. 

8. Why India is a remarkable 5G success story

25 March 2025: India spent decades dogged by regulatory delays and inadequate infrastructure that hampered the development of its cellular infrastructure and services, but it is now home to one of the most surprising and impressive 5G rollout and uptake stories in the world. By the end of the first quarter of 2025, it was boasting nationwide coverage and almost 300 million 5G users – less than 30 months after the first 5G services were launched. The initial launches and network rollouts were made by the country’s two leading telcos, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, starting in October 2022, but they are now also competing for 5G customers with the country’s third major operator, Vodafone Idea, and even state-owned BSNL is starting to get in on the 5G act. Read the full story about India’s 5G development. 

7. Nvidia CEO ushers in the ‘agentic AI’ era

7 January 2025: Jensen Huang, the CEO of AI tech giant Nvidia, set the tone for the year during his 90 minutes-long keynote speech that opened January’s CES show in Las Vegas by declaring that “the age of AI agentics is here”. He declared that agentic AI is a “multitrillion-dollar opportunity”, and a development that will change the way in which people work. “AI agents are the new digital workforce… The IT department of every company is going to be the HR department of AI agents in the future,” he added, a statement that no doubt ruffled feathers in many an IT and HR department. “Today they manage and maintain a bunch of software from the IT industry – in the future they will maintain, nurture, onboard and improve a whole bunch of digital agents and provision them to their companies to use… your IT department is going to become like your AI agent HR,” said Huang. It certainly has been a year of agentic AI, but as the year has gone on there have also been growing numbers of questions about the worthiness of some early efforts. One thing for sure is that agentic AI is going to feature very strongly again in 2026. Read the full story about Huang’s CES keynote.    

6. Vodafone and its vendors offer RAN refresh update

14 October, 2025: The so-called Spring 6 radio access network (RAN) refresh at Vodafone Group managed to stretch through a winter, spring and summer before it finally was unveiled in the autumn and, ultimately, with few surprises. The telco, which has operations in multiple markets across Europe and Africa (the Vodacom and Safaricom groups that serve 355 million customers), noted in October that it was already six months into the five-year programme, which includes “plans to upgrade and extend Vodafone’s RAN with 5G-Advanced (the next evolution of 5G) and energy-efficient tech with our current strategic partners Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia” as well as Samsung, which has joined Vodafone’s RAN supplier roster as “a strategic vendor for the development of Open RAN at scale across Europe”. Fujitsu, Dell Technologies and Wind River also landed roles. Read the full story about the Spring 6 roles of the RAN vendors. 

So that’s 10 through to six revealed – watch out for the second part of this feature, which will identify our top five most read articles, with Deutsche Telekom, Telstra and SoftBank among the companies in the mix. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV