As 2025 comes to an end, we’re seeing continued change across the telecoms and connectivity landscape. The shift towards AI-driven infrastructure, planning for 6G and more complex connectivity environments has challenged organisations to look beyond established models and rethink what “fit-for-purpose” really means.
For Real Wireless, 2025 has been a year of deepening technical insight, testing assumptions in real-world environments, contributing evidence to national programmes, and helping clients navigate an increasingly complex connectivity ecosystems. Below, we look back at the key themes and milestones that shaped our year.
Understanding convergence: private, public and IoT networks
One of the most persistent questions of 2025 has been how different networks, cellular, private 5G, Wi-Fi, IoT, satellite can and should coexist.
Our analysis in Do Your Lights Talk to Your Doors? highlighted the increasing need for integrated network design as organisations deploy more operational technology, to support broader building automation use cases and contribute to energy and climate goals by enabling more efficient, integrated network operations.
Stadium connectivity continued to be an area of intense interest, particularly as fan and sponsor expectations rise and event formats become more digitally ambitious. Our commentary on why the US Super Bowl model doesn’t simply transfer to European stadiums and Stadium Connectivity 2025: From Wi-Fi to Wristbands, explored how venue operators are shifting from technology-first to service-first thinking. Reliable connectivity remains essential, but decisions increasingly hinge on flows of people, operations, payments, access control and experiential layers.
The takeaway for 2025: venue connectivity strategies must be bespoke and grounded in experience, commercial goals and future sustainability.
6G moves from vision to practical debate
Real Wireless played a key role this year in shaping early 6G discussions both in the UK and internationally.
Our work with the SUSTAIN-6G programme underscored the importance of sustainability, not as an afterthought, but as a design parameter from the outset. At the Connected Futures Festival, in Bristol in April, we asked the timely question: What will 6G actually look like? Meanwhile, in Getting 6G Right: Back to Basics, we warned against drifting into abstract visions at the expense of real-world needs.
Throughout 2025, our view remained consistent: 6G should be grounded in measurable value, energy-aware architectures and a clear purpose, or risk losing sight of the users and industries it aims to support.
Advancing Spectrum understanding: research, evidence and award-winning collaboration
Spectrum featured heavily in our 2025 work. Two major strands stood out:
1. Delivering the Spectrum Sandbox Project
We were proud to announce the successful completion and publication of the multi-partner Spectrum Sandbox project; one of the UK’s most ambitious explorations of emerging spectrum sharing models. The project gave the ecosystem real evidence on sharing behaviours, coexistence challenges and practical deployment considerations. Recognition for this work came in the form of the Future Networks Award for the Spectrum Sandbox consortium, a milestone that capped a highly collaborative effort across industry and academia.
2. Independent Analysis on UK and Global Spectrum Trends
Our blog on mmWave auctions examined whether current approaches are truly fit for purpose. We also contributed technical evidence to debates on Device-to-Device (D2D) and Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN), which we presented as part of the UK Spectrum Forum, ensuring policy conversations are rooted in engineering reality.
A year of meaningful industry engagement
From multi-stakeholder workshops to global conferences, we spent 2025 engaging directly with the organisations shaping the future of connectivity.
Highlights included:
- SCWS 2025, where we shared insights on practical deployment challenges and heard candid views from operators and vendors alike
- EUTC Annual Conference, where we reflected on resilience, spectrum needs and the future of utility communications
- Our CEO Simon Fletcher spoke at the launch of JOINER, which brings together academia and industry to identify research questions and understand the fundamental challenges of future networks.
These discussions reaffirmed that while the technology evolves rapidly, organisations still seek independent, grounded guidance to navigate their unique environments.
Future-facing infrastructure: ai, data centres and operational demands
With AI workloads continuing to scale, our analysis on data centre planning addressed a critical and often overlooked topic: how connectivity decisions today will determine whether facilities are prepared for AI-dominated futures.
Increasing power demand, new cooling implications and the need for more resilient fibre architectures all point to a sector undergoing accelerated transformation. The message is clear: operators can’t afford to treat data centres as static assets.
Looking ahead to 2026
As we move into 2026, several trends stand out:
- Integration will matter more than individual technologies
- Sustainability will move from “desirable” to “required”, but needs to be grounded in the practicalities of deployed and to be deployed fixed and wireless communications systems
- Spectrum policy will increasingly define deployment possibilities, with the sharing of spectrum across sectors becoming an important strategic pillar
- 6G will shift from concept to early frameworks and prioritisation
- Industrial and venue connectivity will demand bespoke, scenario-driven design
- NTN and D2D will continue to be a key focus
Also, the final stages of the Future Networks Programme were marked by the UKTIN and DSIT Legacy and Launchpad event in December, which highlighted the importance of creating sustainable business and funding models. As UKTIN continues to evolve, we are actively engaged in shaping elements of that legacy and look forward to continuing to play our part in the UK ecosystem—helping to drive value creation and sustainable growth across the sector.
We thank our partners, collaborators and clients for a productive and impactful year, and we look forward to supporting you through another year of innovation, challenge and real-world problem-solving.
