For every $5,000 spent on AI, Telcos capture $1
sebastianbarros.substack.com
March 9, 2026, 3:47 p.m.
MWC 2026 is over, and the hype hangover begins. Back to reality, there is one metric the telecom industry should look at right now: how much money we are actually making from AI. Not how much AI we deploy internally, not how many partnerships we announce, but real revenue generated by operators. This has been the industry’s problem for decades as Telcos build the infrastructure, enable the ecosystem, carry the traffic, and then watch someone else capture the value.In 2025, the global AI economy generated roughly $1.5 trillion. At best, telecom operators captured about $300 million in direct AI revenue. Even if the definition is stretched to include connectivity and other indirect services, the most optimistic estimates reach around $4 billion. The sense of déjà vu is hard to ignore.Telcos have already invested well over $300 million in AI and are deploying it across networks and operations, yet we capture only about 0.02% of the AI economy. The opportunity is massive. But if telecom does not fix how value is captured, AI will repeat the same story we already lived through with cloud, apps, and streaming.