Capacity Europe 2025 delivered a clear mandate: MNOs must restore trust through global fraud collaboration while building cloud-native infrastructure for the AI-driven messaging future.
Capacity Europe 2025 has once again delivered an unmissable forum for the global connectivity ecosystem, offering a clear vision of the future for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). While the conversations spanned everything from fiber investment to subsea resilience, two themes emerged strongly for the messaging community. Number one, the need to improve fraud prevention capabilities and number two, the imperative to build next-generation infrastructure for AI and cloud.
For MNOs, the path forward isn’t just about maintaining connectivity – it’s about securing the entire value chain and investing strategically to capture the next wave of digital revenue.
Fraud Prevention: A Top-Tier Strategic Priority
It’s official: telecom fraud is now a top priority for executive boards, moving from a security-team concern to a central business imperative. The GLF Fraud Report released at the event highlighted that a significant majority of carriers now view fraud prevention as a top strategic priority.
The consensus across multiple messaging and security panels was definitive: the “trillion-dollar battle” against telecom fraud demands a global, collaborative, and immediate response. Fraud is no longer merely a revenue drain; it’s a severe threat to consumer trust, business continuity, and even government operations.
The Shifting Fraud Landscape
While industry efforts have seen some positive results in tackling voice fraud and the initial rise of A2P SMS fraud (e.g. AIT and Smishing), the fraudsters aren’t standing still. The focus is rapidly shifting:
- AI-Powered Social Engineering: Fraudsters are leveraging sophisticated AI tools to create highly personalized, convincing phishing and Account Takeover (ATO) attacks. These fraud actors continue to target the SMS channel but are now also targeting rich messaging channels like RCS for Business and OTT platforms.
- The MNO’s Role in Trust: The need for the MNO to act as a primary authenticator of digital identities and trust in the system is more critical than ever. The integration of mobile identity and authentication services is paramount to securing user accounts and transactions against increasingly advanced threats. This may involve the initial authentication of senders but also an ongoing monitoring and auditing of these same senders to ensure safety and security.
Regulatory Harmony and Actionable Standards
The industry is moving past talk and into tangible action, focusing on collaboration between MNOs, vendors, and regulators:
- Co-Developing Enforceable Standards: Key stakeholders typically led by national regulators are now actively working to co-develop actionable, scalable, and enforceable operational standards. This involves creating a globally harmonized framework for compliant operations.
- Essential Toolbox: Discussions centered on the need for a common, vendor-neutral toolbox to combat fraud. Priority practices include mandated Traceback capabilities, robust Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, and technical anti-spoofing measures.
- Self-Governance in Focus: The drive for industry self-governance through Codes of Conduct principles from leading associations signals a commitment to drive widespread adoption of best practices, recognizing that MNOs have a fundamental responsibility to ensure their networks can be trusted.
The Openmind Networks Takeaway for MNOs
Robust, real-time messaging security solutions are no longer optional—they are foundational. Your fraud strategy must be dynamic, leveraging advanced analytics and machine learning to detect complex patterns across all messaging channels including OTT and SMS. Investing in fraud prevention is investing in brand trust and future revenue protection, supported by a global shift toward regulatory-industry alignment.
Messaging’s Future: Moving to the Cloud and AI
Megatrends can often be overlaid on niche areas in ways that mightn’t have been predicted. AI and Cloudification are two examples at play currently that cannot be ignored by any industry and messaging is just the same.
The Imperative of Cloudification in Rich Messaging
Rich messaging promises so much for enterprises and consumers with its array of communication options that seek to bring ecommerce, logistics, authentication and customer service onto your messaging apps. This development goes hand-in-hand with the benefits that cloudification offers to MNO’s including the necessary elasticity, resilience and modular infrastructure to deliver this.
Rich messaging was discussed in detail at Capacity Europe 2025 with three narratives emerging as being critical to the ongoing adoption of rich messaging for the industry:
- Hyperscaler Partnerships: Collaboration with hyperscalers is deemed essential for messaging to retain its value. This symbiotic relationship allows MNOs to maintain their position as the gatekeeper of identity and connectivity while leveraging the rich functionality and consumer reach of OTT/RCS platforms.
- AI and Automation: Advancements in AI and automation are pivotal to this future. They enable RBM to be seamlessly integrated into enterprise strategies, boosting customer engagement, differentiating marketing campaigns, and delivering a sustained competitive advantage over basic channels.
- Communicating Value: A key challenge identified was the need to effectively communicate the benefits of RBM – specifically the increased impact, security, and richness – to enterprise marketing and customer experience teams, showcasing its differentiation from legacy A2P SMS.
Infrastructure & Innovation: Powering the AI Future
The other dominant theme was the undeniable acceleration of the AI and Cloud revolution and the enormous pressure it puts on network infrastructure. AI and cloud traffic are expected to rapidly grow, demanding a fundamental rethink of network architecture.
- The AI-Enabled Network: AI needs to be understood first and foremost as an operational tool. MNOs are exploring how AI can be deployed within the network for predictive analysis, real-time automation, and network performance optimization. This move promises better efficiency, lower maintenance costs, and superior scalability, which in turn supports the low-latency, high-volume demands of RBM.
- AI customer experience: Secondly AI needs to be leveraged to transform the end user experience on mobile devices. This is the headline grabbing element of AI applications and it is only in its infancy currently. MNO’s are keen to explore new ways to apply AI bots, APIs and interface technologies to improve the consumer experience of mobile.
The Openmind Networks Takeaway for MNOs
Your core infrastructure is the engine for the next era of digital services. Strategic investment in cloud-native platforms, especially those that can handle the massive data flows of both AI and modern messaging (like RBM), will determine your competitive edge. The time is now to solidify your RCS implementation strategy and establish key hyperscaler partnerships to develop a long-term value proposition beyond SMS.
Actioning the Agenda
Capacity Europe 2025 has set a clear agenda for MNOs: Secure your value chain with proactive fraud defense and modernize your network for the AI-driven future. These two priorities are inextricably linked, especially in the messaging space, where AI will drive both sophisticated attacks and rich new revenue streams.
Don’t wait to adapt. The time for incremental change is over; the market demands bold, strategic action.
To learn more about the topics covered in this article, or to discuss how Openmind Networks can help you navigate the challenges of business messaging, please get in touch or contact our team of messaging experts online here.
