Can the mobile industry evolve fast enough to restore confidence among consumers? - Dario Betti
For years, the mobile industry has promised transformation. In 2025, it finally began to deliver it – not through flashy new devices, but by quietly rebuilding itself around trust, automation and better user experiences. For 2026, the question is no longer whether mobile can evolve, but whether it can do so fast enough to restore confidence among consumers, businesses and regulators alike.
Nowhere is this clearer than in digital identity. What was once a patchwork of pilots has become a matter of national policy. The EU Digital Identity Wallet is set to move identity from experiment to infrastructure, signalling a shift in how people prove who they are online. This comes at a critical moment: deepfake-driven fraud and account takeovers have exposed the limits of passwords and one-time codes. The industry response—biometrics with liveness checks, combined with network-level signals—reflects a growing consensus that identity must be tied to real users, not just devices. The unresolved challenge for 2026 is not technology, but economics: identity will only scale if the industry agrees how to pay for it.
A similar tension runs through the rise of network APIs. After years of hype, programmable networks are edging into commercial reality. Authentication remains the primary revenue driver, but 2025 demonstrated something more ambitious: applications requesting guaranteed performance, latency or throughput in real time. This could redefine how telecoms sell connectivity, particularly for AI agents, cloud gaming and robotics. Yet adoption remains cautious. Traditional telco charging models are poorly matched to the subscription-based world of software.
Messaging, meanwhile, had its most disruptive year in a decade. Apple’s decision to support RCS across platforms changed the US market overnight, finally bringing richer, verified messaging to iPhone–Android conversations. For businesses, this opens the door to branded, trusted interactions at scale. At the same time, WhatsApp continues its global ascent as a commerce and customer-care channel, while SMS—still unmatched for reach—faces an existential reckoning. Fraud, poor practices and aggressive pricing have eroded trust and value. If SMS is to survive beyond 2026, the industry must clean house.
That imperative extends to fraud more broadly. Smishing, artificial traffic inflation and AI-driven scams have forced operators, platforms and regulators into closer alignment. Data sharing agreements, sender verification and tighter controls on spoofing are no longer optional. In 2026, expect fraud prevention to become more integrated, linking messaging, banking signals and network APIs such as SIM-swap detection. Trust is becoming systemic.
Even in traditionally mature areas like wholesale, change is accelerating. eSIM travel, IoT standardisation and satellite-to-mobile connectivity are reshaping roaming economics. The winners will be those who simplify complexity—making provisioning and analytics self-service—while embedding quality guarantees into enterprise agreements.
Payments complete the picture. Direct Carrier Billing has endured, not as a relic, but as a tool for inclusion and conversion, particularly in mobile-first markets. More broadly, the lines between messaging, identity and payments are blurring. Verified channels reduce fraud; network APIs strengthen authentication; mobile money and carrier billing expand access. Regulation is following suit, shifting from reactive oversight to proactive market shaping.
All of this points to a single conclusion: trust is now the mobile industry’s most valuable asset.
Dario Betti is CEO of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF).