The networks that will turn potential into profit in 2026

Growth brings challenges

As a result, AI has fuelled an unprecedented surge in network demand, with the emergence and widespread adoption of agentic AI-enabled applications further reshaping infrastructure requirements, prompting a rapid evolution in networking solutions. Keeping pace with the next wave of AI growth will require new long-haul networks to enable the rapid scaling of capacity needs in both existing and emerging enterprise setups.

This next generation of networks will have to keep pace with AI, offering extended and greater overall network capacity and capability. Assessing in April 2025 how to solve these issues, leading research firm Omdia observed in a study, The all-photonics network enables the next-gen digital economy, that to drive the continued growth of the global AI economy, networks will need to evolve significantly to deliver enhanced capabilities.

The analyst said new, advanced optical networks were necessary to meet advanced application and service requirements, and address surging capacity needs within tight capital expenditure targets. This message will ring ever truer in 2026.

As well as supporting business agility to match bandwidth supply to service utilisation, the new advanced networks that will be deployed will need to offer the opportunity to have infrastructure with lower power consumption per bit to meet sustainability goals and reduce energy costs. And to display clearly the crushing need to address the challenge, the Omdia research calculated that when measured in gigawatts, total global datacentre capacity – what the analyst called the key enabling infrastructure for AI capabilities – is set to grow by 57% from 2024 to 2027.

Next-generation optical networks will almost certainly begin to emerge during 2026, build upon advances in core optics technology to offer improved system reach capabilities, cost optimisation, enhanced optical switching and improvements in multilayer and supplier management supported by the standards community. For enterprises in particular, such infrastructure will offer benefits such as greater security, agility and return on investment for their AI and cloud adoption.

But there could be some headwinds approaching businesses. Looking ahead to the new year, networking giant Cisco noted in December 2025 that the networking industry stood at an inflection point, with an emerging trend of AI infrastructure debt. That is to say, in the race to deploy AI, firms were deploying systems on top of ageing infrastructures that were never built for the demands of the current work environment.

Analysts and tech firms alike believe that 2026 will be defined by firms that modernise their fundamental network infrastructure, building what Cisco called “a resilient, AI-ready backbone to power a safer, faster, transformative future”.

The company also predicted that manufacturing, energy and logistics teams will increasingly use IIoT data to cut downtime and improve efficiency, marking the second phase of AI’s evolution. This shift, it said, would be powered by advances in specialised AI chips, TinyML, for ultra-efficient on-device inference, while federated learning trains models across distributed edge devices without centralising sensitive data. Cisco stressed that embedding security into the infrastructure would be essential to protect these workloads as they scale.

Another area of networking to keep an eye on will be quantum. 2025 saw a number of advances in the area, both in the software and hardware domains and it’s not unreasonable to expect a lot more of both this coming year. In the hardware space, recent work has revealed chips that enable quantum communication over existing fibre without specialised infrastructure. 2026 will also see more research into networks tapping into the behaviour of quantum particles, with commercialisation around 2030.

Advancing 5G networks

As regards the telecoms arena, for the UK at least, the key theme will be advancing the roll-out of 5G networks around the country, allowing businesses to tap into infrastructures that support more complex and richer business applications.

We’ll see operators increasingly switching off 3G networks and using their allocated frequency spectrum for 5G. There is a straightforward logic to this: 3G networks were simply not built to address the demands of the modern comms industry. They were constructed to support basic web browsing, not the high-bandwidth applications that modern businesses are based on, such as video collaboration.

2026 will see a UK mobile market where all of the major operators have switched off their 3G networks and will be offering enhanced mobile coverage across the country. Better mobile means better business. What will also be seen is an increased amount of coverage upgrades, not just in major towns and cities through more masts, but also along major roads and motorways and in coastal areas. Small cells will be installed in the busiest city centres and tourist destinations, and significant 4G and 5G network upgrades will be made at major sporting venues such as the Allianz Stadium and Wembley.

In the US and Asia, 5G Advanced networks will continue their roll-out, with firms really taking advantage of the technological benefits of the new infrastructure. Critically, 5G Advanced is the first mobile infrastructure to be purpose-built for AI. The gains will be readily apparent.

Looking further out, or, to be more accurate, upwards, 2026 will almost certainly see the continuation of the satellite communications industry. A key driver in the development of the market will be the significant increase in the number of handsets about to connect to satellite services.

In 2025, non-terrestrial networks (NTN) and satellite connectivity moved very markedly from niche to mainstream, whether in rural broadband or direct-to-cell use cases. By the end of the year, there were nearly 200 publicly announced operator-satellite partnerships in almost 100 countries and territories, and of these, 34 operators have launched commercial services. This momentum will persist into 2026.

Of those leading the industry, Starlink gained the highest orbit, sealing 44 partnerships, followed by AST SpaceMobile and Lynk. The growth of the satellite IoT market will further solidify satellite’s role in the global connectivity landscape. New constellations providing wide IoT connectivity will be a key part of the satellite communications industry.

Overall, in the networking world, 2026 will be the year when the essence will move from what is possible to what can be unlocked. A year when business plans can become business realities and when coverage and capability go hand in hand. Networks of all forms will be constructed to turn potential into profit and take enterprises into new worlds.