Across 2025, one theme stood out: mobile is being rebuilt around trust, automation and richer user experiences. Dario Betti explains
In 2026, those currents are set to strengthen, changing how networks are exposed, how brands talk to customers and how people pay, prove who they are and stay safe. So, what does that mean for the telemedia sector? Dario Betti draws out the key trends for the sector in 2026 and beyond.
Digital identity goes mainstream: from pilots to policy in 2026
Authentication and digital identity moved from incremental tweaks to structural change. At MEF Connects: ID & Wallets in London, industry leaders agreed that decentralised identity and national wallets are shifting from pilots to policy, with the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) wallet expected to catalyse adoption and standard‑setting in 2026.
The conversation was frank about new threats – deepfake‑enabled account takeovers – and equally clear on the response: stronger biometrics with liveness and network‑based signals that bind a digital identity to a real user.
Meanwhile, US policy forums tracked a push for modernised authentication, passkeys and better proofing across public and private services – evidence that identity is now treated as national infrastructure rather than a niche IT problem.
The prevision: 2026 will be the year about discussing how identity can be paid for. Monetisation is a clear stumbling block to new investments.
Network APIs: software-based connectivity takes off… slowly
Network APIs graduated from hype to commercial reality. Authentication remains the main monetised market, but the Orange and Colt showcase in 2025, showed how applications can request “quality on demand” and program network behaviour in real time across mobile and fixed domains.
Will this be the new commercial interface for telecoms, enabling agentic AI workloads, cloud gaming and tele‑robotics to negotiate for latency and throughput instead of living with best‑effort service? It seems to be a natural evolution. Demand is timidly there, but the market has not yet found a scalable recipe that highlights the value and flexibility to enable it to compete with other solution and the status quo.
Existing models – such as single authentication charges – are not well aligned with the SaaS models, such as subscription APIs, discounted based volumes, success-based fee.
The wider Open Gateway programme now covers nearly 80% of global mobile subscribers, with diversification from fraud‑centric APIs to performance and compute. Monetisation and channel partners became the 2025 watchwords and will remain so through 2026.
A2P Messaging: RCS finally rising, WhatsApp global ascending, SMS dominates with problems
Business messaging (A2P Messaging) experienced its most consequential year in a decade. Apple’s iOS 18 rollout flipped the default for cross‑platform texting to RCS from SMS, pushing the US to roughly a billion person-to-person RCS messages a day and unlocking richer group chat and media features between iPhone and Android users.
For enterprises, this sets the stage for verified, branded conversations via RCS Business Messaging, while WhatsApp consolidated its role as a global A2P engine, with Meta signalling a multi‑billion run‑rate and MEF analysis tempering the most exuberant projections.
The result is a genuine “mix” in 2026: RCS for verified, carrier-aligned experiences at scale (growing fast but from a small base); WhatsApp for commerce and conversational care (starting to show global coverage, and sustained growth); and SMS for universal reach where price, fraud safeguards and reliability still matter.
Unfortunately, the number of SMS are not growing in the same direction, fraud to consumers and enterprise and aggressive pricing policies in certain countries have badly eroded the success of the Business SMS market.
The prediction for 2026: SMS has to clean up the market, removing bad players and bad practises – it is now a question of long-term survival.
Antifraud: time to get stronger responses in the market
The same mix extended into anti‑fraud, where confidence and collaboration rose as priorities. MEF’s Anti‑Fraud 2025 convened operators, CPaaS platforms and regulators to confront smishing, artificially inflated traffic and AI‑driven scams. The emerging consensus was practical: share signals faster, standardise sender verification, and balance regulatory action with industry charters to restore trust. That work began in earnest, with CPaaS leaders signing a memorandum to coordinate data sharing and anti‑AIT practices.
Expect 2026 to bring tighter controls on spoofing and stronger alignment between messaging verification, bank fraud telemetry and operator APIs such as SIM‑swap and number verification.
Wholesale: innovation, scale and efficiency await
Telecom wholesale found new momentum by embracing eSIM travel, 5G roaming and IoT standardisation. MEF’s wholesale fora highlighted a pragmatic path: monetise roaming in the eSIM era, tame complexity with common APIs and CDR formats for wholesale IoT, and re‑tool voice to protect value while fraud evolves.
The satellite‑to‑mobile conversation – once peripheral – moved centre stage as a strategic complement that can interconnect and reshape coverage economics.
In 2026, the winners will be wholesalers who make roaming analytics and IoT provisioning self‑service, and who integrate quality signals from Open Gateway into enterprise SLAs. The market for wholesale is still thriving with innovation, despite maturity and challenges in some key markets.
DCB grows revenue, expands compliance and conversion power
Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) weathered competitive heat from cards and wallets, but remained essential to digital inclusion and incremental revenues, especially in mobile‑first markets. MEF coverage and member events showed DCB advancing through better compliance, premium content and broader app‑store reach, while analysts continued to forecast double‑digit growth to the decade’s end.
The outlook for 2026 is twofold: operators will push DCB to full payment‑method licensing in more regions and pair it with fraud controls and transparent pricing; merchants will treat DCB as a conversion lever in gaming, streaming and micro‑subscriptions, not merely an alternative tender type.
Mobile payments integrate messaging, identity and inclusion
Mobile payments more broadly re‑entered MEF’s mainstream agenda. The connective tissue between messaging, identity and payments became clearer in 2025: verified messaging reduces scam risk; network APIs harden authentication; and mobile money plus DCB expand the customer base.
MEF’s late‑year programme updates pointed to a 2026 roadmap that emphasises making mobile money friendlier to digital merchants and elevating DCB’s regulatory standing – signals that the association sees payments as a pillar for growth and inclusion rather than a side note.
Regulation shifts to proactive
Regulation evolved from reactive oversight to market‑shaping force. MEF’s US forum underscored that policy choices on messaging, tariffs and verification will determine who captures value as channels converge.
In Europe, fraud is top of the agenda for regulators, and intervention in messaging and voice is now common across the markets. In Africa, cross‑border settlement systems hinted at what happens when regulators and networks coordinate to reduce friction at scale.
Expect more structured co‑regulation in 2026 – industry charters backed by enforcement –and more national wallet and trusted‑caller initiatives that push identity and consent to the fore.
Trust is the value to build
Amid all this, trust emerged as the organising principle. MEF’s Anti‑Fraud Yearbook and event discussions returned repeatedly to the same idea: without consumer and enterprise confidence, advanced channels and APIs will underperform. The industry’s response – agent verification in RCS, sender‑ID registries, shared fraud intelligence and privacy-preserving biometrics – all of which points to a more resilient ecosystem in 2026.
The year ahead
Finally, 2025 showed that convergence is practical, not rhetorical. Identity stacks now call network signals; messaging journeys end in payments; wholesale teams bake API quality into roaming; and developers treat networks as programmable resources. The trend for 2026 is execution: fewer pilots, more commercial deployments; fewer silos, more interoperable platforms.
Author
Dario Betti is CEO of MEF (Mobile Ecosystem Forum)
