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December 23, 2025

End of year message: Thank You to our World Broadband Association Members around the world for making 2025 such a success!

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As 2025 ends, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on all that the WBBA and our members have achieved over the last 12 months.  To celebrate significant milestones and to look to 2026 with all the possibilities that it brings.

Our Membership:

As a membership organisation we’re delighted with the significant growth this year. We have become an organization that has a truly global representation with over 228 member companies around the world, including expansion into Europe, Latin America and Africa.

This growth allows us to truly demonstrate WBBA’s growing influence and recognition across the globe. Together, we continue to advance our mission of enabling universal connectivity and fostering inclusive digital development for all.

Our leadership:

We have expanded our leadership teams to include an Advisory Committee of four distinguished leaders that bring expertise across Europe, Africa, America and Asia.

Our Board, Oversight, Financial, Collaboration & Liaisons committees have grown and deliver true vision and strategic thinking across all sectors of the organisation.

In March 2025 we elected our new board of directors, expanding it from 12 to 15 member companies.  Our new board runs from 2025 to 2027 and at our first board meeting we appointed the leadership of our board committees.

  • Our Finance Committee, which oversees all the financial operations of the WBBA is chaired by Markus Reber from Swisscom, Switzerland.
  • Our Collaborations and Liaisons Committee, which sets the strategic direction for our collaboration working groups and identifies which other industry organisations WBBA partners with, is chaired by Sunil Piyarlall from Openserve, South Africa.
  • And our Oversight Committee which provides oversight on all other WBBA activities including events, membership growth and industry awards programs, rotates chair every 6 months. From March to September, it was chaired by Mr. LiuZhiyong from China Telecom, and from October to March 2026 it is being chaired by Kevin Hasley, Ookla, USA.

These committees have been heavily engaged in all aspects of the WBBA operations throughout the year and are a core element of WBBA excellent governance.

During 2025 the WBBA also formed an Advisory Committee made up of very senior individuals from the global communications and high-tech industries.  It is chaired by Dr. Zhou Houlin, former Secretary General of the ITU.  Its members include, Mr. Boris Koprivnikar, former deputy Prime Minister, Slovenia, EU; Mr. Brahima Sanou, former director of Intelsat, ITU and African Union; Mr. Artur Coimbra, former minister of Communications, Brazil.

Each of our Advisory Committee members have been invaluable throughout the year in helping WBBA expand our membership and develop relationships with key influencers in the communications industry across the globe.

If you would like to get more details, please go here: World Broadband Association: Broadband Industry | Global Telecom

Our Industry leading reports, white papers & collaboration Program:

We delivered 14 reports and white papers in 2025:

  1. 5G Best Practices and Deployment Guide
  2. Expanding Advanced Fixed Broadband Network for All.
  3. Gigacity Index 2025 - Restoring Whole Scenario’s and Technologies
  4. Africa: Broadband Investment Guidebook
  5. Circular Economies and the Evolution of Fixed Broadband
  6. Using Artificial Intelligence in the Predeployment Phases of Broadband Infrastructure
  7. Beyond Broadband: Revolutionizing CPN Connectivity
  8. Europe: Broadband Investment Guidebook
  9. AI for Net5.5G & Net 5.5g for AI
  10. Test Analysis of WBBA WG4 & GSMA Voice Over Wi-fi
  11. Enriched service over converged Wi-Fi and cellular with GSMA
  12. Fiber Development Index (FDI) Analysis 2025
  13. Broadband and Cloud Development Index Report 2025

With 2 launching early in 2026: Optical Network Architecture & State of AI report.

For the first time WBBA launched in Latin America with the LATAM task force – Beyond Connectivity: Transforming Latin America's Digital Landscape Through Investments in Broadband and the Cloud.   All reports can be found on the WBBA members hub.

Our Global events

2025 marked an exceptionally active and successful year for our global events programme.

We hosted the WBBA Broadband Development Congress (BDC) in Barcelona in March, followed by BDC Shanghai in May. Building on this strong momentum, we were delighted to host our inaugural BDC in São Paulo, Brazil, in October.  This was closely followed by our highly successful BDC events in Paris and Cape Town later in October.

Across the BDC series, we delivered a strong line-up of AI-centric themes and attracted more than 1,300 attendees globally.  Our first BDC in São Paulo achieved particularly strong engagement, with 287 participants attending in person and online. In addition to our flagship congresses, we delivered a highly successful webinar series, extending our global reach and enabling year-round engagement with our members and industry stakeholders.

In parallel, we strengthened our community-led approach, with members playing an increasingly active role in initiating and co-organising key activities, including the successful delivery of BDC Cape Town.

Our Award Program

The 2025 Broadband Excellence Awards were the most successful in the programme’s history. We received a record number of submissions, representing a fivefold increase year-on-year, and witnessed an exceptional standard of innovation and real-world impact from shortlisted finalists and winners.   The award categories are:

  • Network Infrastructure Innovation Excellence
  • AI in Network Excellence
  • Broadband Innovation Excellence for Future Applications
  • Smart Gigacity Excellence
  • Broadband for Digital Inclusion Excellence
  • Intelligent Home Innovation Excellence

We look forward to seeing all the great projects being celebrated and highlighted again in 2026.

Our WBBA Member Hub & Community

This year we fully enabled access to the WBBA Hub and all Member SharePoint resources for over 300 users, supporting collaboration for the various Working Group and Committee activities including the development of White Papers, WBBA Overarching Governance Framework and Membership Agreement, budgeting and forecasting tools and processes, IT Strategy, and the efforts of the EU and LATAM Task Forces.

There has been a significant increase in member engagement (and numbers!) this year, with more users engaging across multiple channels directly with the WBBA team, and with each other. Updated new member onboarding processes and initiatives like the ‘WBBA Members in the News’ articles (posted in the All Members Area Group Chat and emailed to all active Hub users) have been well received.  We strive to continue developing further collaboration and communication opportunities for all members.

Please continue to share your feedback and stories - and keep talking!

Your feedback is important and helps us to develop the services and resources for you to communicate and collaborate, so thank you to everyone who has answered a survey, provided verbal feedback, or got in touch via email or the Hub this year.

Next year we aim to continually increase and enhance the number of available resources for our ever-growing number of members, and it is only from your valuable input and unique insights that we can deliver them.

Community Management

This year we expanded our content strategy by launching several new initiatives including: The coffee welcome and onboarding sessions, Our leadership series as well as Our member success stories and new member announcements.  The WBBA Hub platform is a way for you to showcase your expertise and innovation to all our members, so please reach out to the community team to get your stories and content amplified.

Our marketing impact and brand awareness

2025 marked a transformative year for WBBA's marketing initiatives, delivering successful growth in community engagement and digital visibility. We made significant strides in expanding our reach through strategic partnerships with top-tier trade publications including Light Reading and Telecoms.com.

Our LinkedIn presence flourished with a remarkable 40% increase in followers, particularly among high-level industry personnel, demonstrating our growing influence within the broadband industry.

A key milestone was our inaugural BDC São Paulo, which generated exceptional engagement from the Latin American region compared to previous years. This expansion into new markets reflects our commitment to fostering global connectivity discussions and building meaningful relationships across diverse regions.

Our digital footprint experienced substantial growth, with organic traffic nearly doubling throughout the year. This impressive engagement pattern clearly demonstrates our success in achieving greater visibility and raising brand awareness across the industry.

By leveraging WBBA's strategic initiatives and key insights from our comprehensive whitepapers, we actively engaged with audiences across multiple channels, creating valuable touchpoints that resonated with industry stakeholders worldwide.

These accomplishments represent more than just numbers. They reflect our dedication to building a stronger, more connected global community. As we look toward 2026, we're excited to build upon this momentum and continue advancing our mission of enabling universal connectivity and fostering inclusive digital development.

We hope you are as excited as we are about the opportunities ahead in the Broadband, AI & Cloud Industry.  We look forward to working closely with you to make 2026 a success for all.

With best wishes,
The WBBA Team 

Connecting the World by Bringing the Benefit of Broadband to All

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Key Messages
Key Messages
Recommendations
Recommendations
The Importance of Greater Broadband Investment​
Download White Paper

Key Messages

Advanced cloud technology together with superior end-to-end connectivity can enable a wider and more sophisticated range of applications that can in turn drive greater innovation, efficiency, and wealth.
Both enterprises and broader industry ecosystems are actively looking at broadband’s role in enabling their digital transformation. Most respondents to the WBBA’s Thought Leadership Enterprise Survey stated that they need faster and more reliable internet to run their business applications.
Certainly, in the short to medium term, xDSL, cable modem, fixed-wireless access (FWA), and satellite are all expected to have a role in the delivery of broadband services. However, full-fiber access will always deliver the optimum experience and remains the most sustainable and cost-efficient option.
There is a danger therefore for governments to base their cost-benefit analysis on a national economic view. However, such analysis will miss all the social benefits, as well as the more local economic benefits, that advanced broadband networks can bring. Governments must take all benefits into account, including more localized ones, when creating national broadband policies.
However, future applications will not only need ultra-high-speed services but also ultra-low latency and jitter, with high levels of reliability and consistency if they are to function properly. Countries with networks that are not capable of meeting such criteria will be left behind as the world moves to the next phase of internet applications such as the “metaverse.”
Fiber networks are significantly more environmentally friendly than equivalent copper-based networks, and can help support other green initiatives such as greater working from home, the use of advanced videoconferencing, etc. Fiber-based networks also require less maintenance due to there being less active equipment in the field, and can therefore reduce operators’ operational costs.
With rollout of new access technologies like 5G and Fiber, IPv6 reached more than 30% penetration worldwide (APNIC) and is rapidly growing. IPv6 Enhanced technologies, including segment routing over IPv6, per flow monitoring and AI, enable a multitude of objects and people to be flexibly connected to the proper services, granting end-to-end quality of experience.
Based on the responses from the WBBA Thought Leadership Survey, respondents believed, on average, this coverage could be expanded to approximately 70% through private investment. It is clear that government support will be needed to get to 100%.
However, a lack of data on the available infrastructure, access to key infrastructure such as ducts and in-building networks, and a lack of understanding both internally and externally are also key barriers to further investment.
Respondents to the WBBA survey stated that a reduction in regulatory barriers, greater flexibility in partnership arrangements, copper switch-off regulations, and setting out minimum service standards for network installations, would all take priority over financial support.

Recommendations

All countries must look to maximize the potential of broadband. This means creating long-term national broadband plans that evolve around three basic phases of broadband adoption:

  • Phase 1: Fast deployment of basic connectivity (most likely focusing on wireless technologies)
  • Phase 2: Continued rollout of fixed-broadband access to 100% of premises
  • Phase 3: Continued investment in advanced broadband technologies to move to gigabit societies and beyond.

In order to help facilitate this evolution to advanced broadband networks, government organizations and regulators must consider:

  • Implementing regulatory flexibility, including the removal of outdated or non-essential regulation
  • Introducing flexibility in partnership arrangements; for example, allowing agreements between players, such as co-financing, collaborative models, public-private partnerships, etc.
  • Facilitating deployment through municipality approvals, using existing resources (government buildings, streetlights, ducts, etc.) and sharing infrastructure and facilities, including in-building networks. This should also include other types of utility infrastructure where possible
  • Providing financial assistance through investment support, incentives, and subsidies; e.g., universal service funds
  • Improving access to telecom facilities and physical infrastructure; improving procedures for rights of way and accessing public infrastructure, as well as broadband mapping.
Making the Recommendations a Reality

Operators, enterprises, vendors, regulators, and policy-makers should seek to create a collective voice, to evangelize, advocate, co-create, and partner in the drive toward the provision of ultra-broadband networks and services for all. Organizations such as the WBBA can help by influencing key stakeholders through discussion, education, and promotion. Specifically, the WBBA should aim to:

  • Set out the importance of greater broadband investment, not just for the good of the service provider but for countries as a whole
  • Promote regulatory, legislative, public relations agendas that help advance the interests of members through WBBA publications and live events, highlighting best-practice business models from around the world to remove any “lack of understanding at boardroom level”
  • Influence through research, discussion, and promotion of new potential marketing or naming concepts for fixed broadband to ease mass-market understanding of the different generations of broadband access – hiding technical jargon such as “Mbps,” “latency,” and “jitter” from the customer
  • Through thought leadership, media activity, and live events, continue to make the case for what governments need to recognize and do to close the industry innovation, socioeconomic, and environmental benefit gaps through infrastructure investment
  • Explore through new research the challenges and opportunities arising from changes in the industry structure, addressing its impact on the business and the standardization landscape. This includes aspects of fiber wholesale, the move toward horizontal industry structure with separation of infrastructure and services, and the change of customer relationship to digital
  • Work with stakeholder partners to understand and promote the potential of future applications that will bring new benefits to broadband customers and wider society
  • Develop in-depth thought-leadership research on the new revenue opportunities advanced networks can provide to service providers in both the consumer and enterprise markets
  • Develop and highlight best-practice investment models that show the true return on investment of a full-fiber rollout to both private companies and government organizations
  • Champion the needs of its members to highlight barriers to future investment, creating a platform to enable open discussion between different types of stakeholder to encourage greater cooperation and new partnerships.
Martin Creaner
Director General of the World Broadband Association

Martin Creaner is one of the leading strategic thinkers in the global communications industry with a successful career as an executive with Motorola and British Telecom, as well as over a decade as President and CEO of the TM Forum.

Martin currently advises the boards of a number of companies in the communications and high tech industries, ranging from up-and-coming digital economy companies, to market leaders.

Martin has been named among the 25 Most Influential People in Telecom Software by Billing World and has twice been named as one of Global Telecoms Business’ Top 100. Martin holds a Master of Business Administration from Cranfield University, Cranfield School of Management; a Master of Science in Telecommunications from the University of East Anglia; and Bachelor’s degrees in Engineering and Physics from Dublin City University and the University College Dublin, respectively.

Martin is also a recognized thought-leader on digital transformation and the trends of the emerging digital economy. His most recent book “Transforming the Telco” explains the opportunities and challenges that digital transformation presents and outlines how the Telco might navigate this difficult process.

Previous books include “Delivering the Digital Economy”, which outlines the dynamics of the digital economy, and “Frameworx Distilled” & “NGOSS Distilled”, which provide a detailed guidebook to the standards that underpin the Telecom software industry.

Martin was appointed unanimously to the role of Director General by WBBA members.

Martin lives in Cork, Ireland.

Li Zhengmao
Doctor of Engineering, Professor, WBBA Board Chairman

Li Zhengmao, Doctor of Engineering, Professor. He was awarded the title of “Chinese Doctors with Outstanding Contribution” by the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council & the former State Education Commission, and granted the China Youth Science and Technology Award by the China Association for Science and Technology, and the 2017 Distinguished Industry Leader Award by IEEE; he was inducted into the 2020 IPv6 Internet Hall of Fame and enjoyed special government allowances.

Li served as Vice-Chairman of China Institute of Communications, Vice President of Internet Society of China, Vice-Chairman of the Association of Communications Across the Taiwan Straits, Vice-Chairman of All-China Environment Federation, Board member of GSM Association (GSMA), Board Director of Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance, Executive Director of Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI), Vice President of China United Communications Corporation Limited, Vice President of China Mobile Communications Corporation Limited, and President of China Telecommunications Corporation Limited.