The telecommunications industry is entering a new era. Partnerships with MVNOs, IoT platforms, and enterprise customers demand flexible, secure, and real-time access to network and customer data. Traditional batch-driven architectures are no longer sufficient. Instead, real-time data streaming combined with policy-driven data sharing provides a powerful foundation for building scalable data products for internal and external consumers. A modern Telco must manage data collection, processing, governance, data sharing, and distribution with the same rigor as its core network services. Leading Telcos now operate centralized real-time data streaming platforms to integrate and share network events, subscriber information, billing records, and telemetry from thousands of data sources across the edge and core networks.
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Telecommunications networks generate vast amounts of data every second. Every call, message, internet session, device interaction, and network event produces valuable information. Historically, much of this data was processed in batches — often hours or even days after it was collected. This delayed model no longer meets the needs of modern Telcos, partners, and customers.
Data streaming transforms how Telcos handle information. Instead of storing and processing data later, it is ingested, processed, and acted upon in real time as it is generated. This enables continuous intelligence across all parts of the network and business.
Learn more about “The Top 20 Problems with Batch Processing (and How to Fix Them with Data Streaming)“.
Key benefits of data streaming for Telcos include:
Technologies like Apache Kafka and Apache Flink are now core components of Telco IT architectures. They allow Telcos to integrate massive, distributed data flows from radio access networks (RAN), 5G core systems, IoT ecosystems, billing and support platforms, and customer devices.
Modern Telcos use data streaming to not only improve internal operations but also to deliver trusted, secure, and differentiated services to external partners such as MVNOs, IoT platforms, and enterprise customers.
Learn more about data streaming in the telecommunications sector:
Data streaming is not an allrounder to solve every problem. Hence, a modern enterprise architecture combines data streaming with purpose-built telco-specific platforms and SaaS solutions, and data lakes/warehouses/lakehouses like Snowflake or Databricks for the analytical workloads.
I already wrote about the combination of data streaming platforms like Confluent together with Snowflake and Microsoft Fabric. A blog series about data streaming with Confluent combined with AI and analytics using Databricks is coming right after this blog post here.
By mastering real-time data streaming, Telcos unlock the ability to share valuable insights securely and efficiently with internal divisions, IoT platforms, and enterprise customers.
Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) — companies that offer mobile services without owning their own network infrastructure — are an equally important group of consumers. As an MVNO delivers niche services, competitive pricing, and tailored customer experiences, real-time data sharing becomes essential to support their growth and enable differentiation in a highly competitive market.
A strong real-time data sharing platform in the telco industry integrates multiple types of components and stakeholders, organized into four critical areas:
A real-time data platform aggregates information from a wide range of technical systems across the Telco infrastructure.
Stream processing technologies ensure raw events are turned into enriched, actionable data products as they move through the system.
Effective governance frameworks guarantee that data sharing is secure, compliant, and aligned with commercial agreements.
Multiple internal and external stakeholders rely on tailored, policy-controlled access to real-time data streams to achieve business outcomes.
In modern Telco architectures, data products act as the building blocks for a data mesh approach, enabling decentralized ownership, scalable integration with microservices, and direct access for consumers across the business and partner ecosystem.
The right data products accelerate time-to-insight and enable additional revenue streams. Leading Telcos typically offer:
These data products can be offered via APIs, secure topics, or integrated into partner platforms for direct consumption.
Real-time data streaming empowers each data consumer within the Telco ecosystem to achieve specific business outcomes, drive operational excellence, and unlock new growth opportunities based on continuous, trusted insights.
Internal Telco Divisions
Real-time insights into network behavior allow proactive incident management and customer support. Marketing teams optimize campaigns based on live subscriber data, while finance teams minimize revenue leakage by tracking billing and usage patterns instantly.
MVNO Partners
Access to live network quality indicators helps MVNOs improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Real-time fraud monitoring protects against financial losses. Tailored subscriber insights enable MVNOs to offer personalized plans and upsells based on actual usage.
IoT Platform Services
Large-scale telemetry streaming enables better device management, predictive maintenance, and operational automation. Real-time geolocation data improves logistics, fleet management, and smart infrastructure performance. Event-driven alerts help detect and resolve device malfunctions rapidly.
Enterprise Customers
Private 5G networks and managed services depend on live analytics to meet SLA obligations. Enterprises integrate real-time network telemetry into their own systems for smarter decision-making. Data-driven optimizations ensure higher uptime, better resource utilization, and enhanced customer experiences.
Real-time data sharing is no longer a luxury for Telcos — it is a competitive necessity. A successful platform must balance openness with control, ensuring that every data exchange respects privacy, governance, and commercial boundaries.
Hybrid cloud architectures play a critical role in this evolution. They enable Telcos to process, govern, and share real-time data across on-premises infrastructure, edge environments, and public clouds seamlessly. By combining the flexibility of cloud-native services with the security and performance of on-premises systems, hybrid cloud ensures that data remains accessible, scalable, cost-efficient and compliant wherever it is needed.
By deploying scalable data streaming solutions across a hybrid cloud environment, Telcos enable secure, real-time data sharing with MVNOs, IoT platforms, enterprise customers, and internal business units. This empowers critical use cases such as dynamic quality of service monitoring, real-time fraud detection, customer behavior analytics, predictive maintenance for connected devices, and SLA compliance reporting — all without compromising performance or regulatory requirements.
The future of telecommunications belongs to those who implement real-time data streaming and controlled data sharing — turning raw events into strategic advantage faster, more securely, and more effectively than ever before.
How do you share data in your organization? Do you already leverage data streaming or still operate in batch mode? Join the data streaming community and stay informed about new blog posts by subscribing to my newsletter and follow me on LinkedIn or X (former Twitter) to stay in touch. And make sure to download my free book about data streaming use cases.
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