Connectivity as infrastructure: Building networks for technology and revenue growth
Connectivity is becoming more than just a utility priced purely on data volume. In 2026, its story is changing, moving away from the concept of network access as a commodity to the foundation of a layered value architecture. And this architecture is where measurable economic and commercial value lies. In 2026, the concept of connectivity as revenue is being felt across three key layers: the revenue stream for the telco and infrastructure operator, as an enabler of value creation for the public and private sectors, and as a platform layer from which new programmable services emerge.
Global telecom service revenue, says the PwC Global Telecom Outlook 2025-2029 report, is expected to increase from $1.15 trillion in 2024 to $1.32 trillion by 2029, while data traffic is anticipated to double to 6.3 zetabytes in the same year. Revenue is growing at a fraction of the rate at which usage is consuming the infrastructure that generates it.
The habit of putting the network as a cost centre is being replaced by the concept of connectivity as a sustainable and substantial infrastructure investment that can change how the organisation approaches revenue and innovation. This change and reframe is essential. As AI expands its reach and data centres race alongside the technology to keep up, network operators run the risk of losing momentum to the computer economy. It will simply grow around the networks, potentially leaving service providers behind.
The PwC report highlights this discrepancy already, with Application Enablement Platforms (AEPs) growing at an anticipated 31% compound annual growth rate and $250 billion in revenue by 2029, compared with the relatively flat revenue from connectivity revenue at less than $10 billion. The central challenge has moved from extending coverage to converting connectivity into measurable value.
And perhaps one of the most relevant and significant points of value and potential growth sits with payments. A restaurant estate running on limited connectivity with LTE devices can lose revenue and customer stickiness with persistent transaction failures. Rebuilding the connectivity underneath the payments infrastructure with managed routers and analytics layered on top can reduce the failure rate significantly and deliver measurable revenue recovery.
In South Africa, where connectivity can still be challenging for organisations, this reframe from connectivity as a cost centre to revenue generator is essential. According to the PayFast State of Pay 2025 report, more than 80% of the merchants surveyed agreed that digital payments would likely become their primary sales channel over the next three years. A World Bank study from early 2026 reinforced the value of this change, highlighting how companies capable of receiving digital payments are less likely to be excluded from credit as banks now have reliable insights into company patterns and payments.
Connectivity only becomes a revenue-bearing infrastructure when it can be relied on and reliability is a function of design. The most resilient networks run more than one primary connection, running simultaneously with a further fallback between them so business critical services remain live. And this level of redundancy is essential in markets like South Africa where grid instability and uneven last mile quality remain challenging.
With it in place, companies gain two invaluable benefits. The first is the customer and the stickiness of transactions and engagement, and the second is visibility into stock, pricing and quality. The analytics that sit above the network only work if the connection layer is resilient and reliable and dependence on this layer is only going to grow with the integration of AI capabilities and services. Every AI ambition a business holds, from predictive ordering to automated quality control, rests on the same foundation – connectivity.
The difference between talking about resilience and engineering it, comes down to defining exactly what role connectivity plays in the organisation and then delivering this across industries and conditions. Connectivity has stopped being the cost of staying online and instead has become the infrastructure that decides how much a company can earn, how rapidly it can integrate new technologies, and how quickly it can adapt services to meet customer expectations.
