From alleged price wars in the US to support for the fair-share model from an unexpected quarter, and a busy year ahead undersea in the Pacific, 2026 is up and running. By Contributing Editor Annie Turner.

According to some, a ferocious price war has broken out among the three main mobile operators in the US as they chase market share. WRAL news says that “what began as targeted holiday promotions in late 2025 has evolved into a full-scale price war, with multi-year price guarantees and aggressive ‘bill-shredding’ AI tools designed to poach subscribers from rival networks.”

For instance, in January T-Mobile announced Better Value with a five-year price guarantee on talk, text and data, living up to its self-appointed Un-carrier label.

“For consumers, the shift represents the most favorable buying environment in a decade, but for investors, it signals a period of margin compression and high-stakes capital reallocation,” WRAL reckons.

As Fierce Network points out in this article, not everyone agrees with this version of events, but as LightReading’s Iain Morris notes, in an article about the exodus of vendors from telecoms, in 2010, Deutsche Telekom, now Europe’s biggest telco by a huge margin, earned revenues of €31 a month from an average contract customer in Germany. By 2024, this had shrivelled to €19.

Low consumer prices and choice have always been the watchwords of European Union regulation regarding telecom services, leading to market fragmentation, poor return on investment and limiting funding for future networks.

Not in Europe’s DNA

Hence a lot is riding on the European Union’s upcoming Digital Network Act (DNA). The European Commission published the long awaited first draft in January. Its purpose is to update, simplify and harmonise the European Union’s regulatory approach to telecoms infrastructure – mobile, fixed, non-terrestrial and cloud – and their associated ecosystems, taking into account input from stakeholders.

The GSMA, which represents operators globally, summed the DNA up as “evolution where revolution was required”. Luke Kehoe, Industry Analyst at Ookla, echoed the sentiment: “The European Commission’s Digital Networks Act is a surgical intervention rather than the ‘game-changing’ revolution promised in the [Thierry] Breton era.

“The rhetoric of a Telecoms Single Market remains, but the text reveals a pragmatic, aggressive shift of power from national capitals to Brussels in spectrum governance and satellite authorisation, framed as reducing fragmentation and boosting sovereignty in a fraught geopolitical context where telecoms infrastructure has become a core pillar of European industrial strategy and security.”

Kehoe concludes, “For operators, the DNA offers a clearer path to scale but stops short of the ‘fair share’ payments they lobbied for.”

Electricity versus bandwidth

A research note from Strand Consult made a striking comparison with the Trump Administration’s approach to the surge in demand for electricity in the US, caused by AI’s apparently insatiable need for data centres and associated infrastructure. In short, the White House thinks hyperscalers should cover the electricity-related costs they create.

Strand’s research note says, “the rapid expansion of AI-driven data centers is straining electric grids and broadband networks and shifting costs to consumers, communities, and network providers. These pressures are not driven by consumer choice, but by platform business models that monetize artificial intelligence, advertising, and bandwidth-intensive services. Without a credible framework to allocate cost, infrastructure investment becomes politically unstable and economically distorted.”

The note continues, “The emerging electricity policy debate offers a clear template for broadband and telecom markets, where similar cost-shifting dynamics are already entrenched. This note examines the unfolding US policy response to hyperscale data centers and power generation and why its logic extends to broadband cost recovery for mobile and telecom markets worldwide.”

Google powers subsea frenzy in 2026

Meanwhile, Google is expected to deploy eight subsea cable systems this year, mostly in the Pacific, taking its global total to 30. TeleGeography research analyst Lane Burdette said around $6 billion in new cable systems is forecast to go into service in 2026 – up from about $3.2 billion in 2025 – the most for more than a decade.

The graph below shows the second way competition in subsea capacity could decrease –new builds are dominated by hyperscalers, not wholesalers, as older cables are retired (the first reason competition could decrease).

Source: https://www2.telegeography.com/ptc

NTT Data, Sumitomo Corp and JA Mitsui Leasing are also to build the 8,100 km Intra-Asia Marine Cable (I-AM Cable) to connect Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, costing $1 billion. NTT Data said the new cable would reinforce Japan’s role as a data hub and ensure diversity and redundancy.

Google opens Thai cloud region

Still with Google, Google Cloud opened its first cloud region in Bangkok, Thailand as part of its $1 billion investment in the country it promised two years ago. It has three availability zones for in-country access to Google Cloud services and AI technologies, and is integrated with Google’s global network. This includes the recently announced TalayLink subsea cable that will connect Australia and Thailand.

All of which is a welcome economic to Thailand: an article in the Financial Times [subscription needed] quoted Burin Adulwattana, Chief Economist at Kasikornbank saying, “It has gone from being hailed as Teflon Thailand to the sick man of Asia within 10 years…That’s quite alarming.”

Ekaraj Panjavinin, President, True Digital Group, stated, “With Google Cloud, we are excited to leverage this secure, low-latency foundation to co-innovate faster, build a resilient digital infrastructure, and strengthen Thailand’s long-term competitiveness on the global stage.”