- Telecom M&A defies economic headwinds in 2025, says PwC
- Aside from the “mega deals,” a lot of smaller M&A moves are happening
- Private equity rethinks rural fiber bets amid BEAD changes
Despite global economic uncertainty and rising interest rates, telecom M&A is still alive and kicking with AT&T/Lumen, Charter/Cox and other mergers cropping up.
Deal making has held up “remarkably well” in 2025, said PwC Principal Daniel Hays, and it’s not just because of the “perceived deregulatory environment” that came about post-election. Compared to other industries, telecom is pretty resilient in the long-term.
“Telecom services, whether broadband or mobile, have become an absolute necessity and a set of spending that people find extremely difficult to give up,” he told Fierce. “So that gives a lot of investors confidence when it comes to deal making.”
Having said that, telco M&A isn’t totally shielded from macro impact. S&P Global Market Intelligence found most telecom and media deals this year were valued under $10 billion.
This figure (which notably excludes the $34.5 billion Charter/Cox merger) reflects market sensitivity to “rising policy uncertainty” and a potential shift to smaller size deals, S&P Global noted.
But M&A activity in the telecom infrastructure space “tends to be lumpy,” Hays said. The “mega deals” happening in broadband overshadow the volume of smaller deals taking place. Consolidation is also ramping up, meaning multi-billion-dollar deals are occurring less frequently, he added.
How BEAD impacts the future of M&A
With changes underway to the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, private equity firms are starting to re-evaluate their investments in rural fiber markets, Hays noted.
PE investors over the years have poured “tens or hundreds of millions of dollars” into fiber deployments for lower-density markets. They’re now asking themselves, “is this the time to exit or maybe roll up or consolidate some of these assets under larger roofs,” he said.
If federal funding shifts from fiber to fixed wireless access (FWA) and low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite, could private capital follow suit? Maybe, as PE firms are “increasingly interested in looking for plays where they could be part of the satellite value chain,” said Hays.
Meaning they could invest in companies that manufacture satellite components or customer terminals, installation service providers, ground stations, etc.
But we probably won’t be seeing private equity buy up the actual LEO infrastructure, as that’s just out of their price range.
Satellite deployments are coming “at such a massive scale that they largely swamp the ability of most private equity investors to play a meaningful role,” Hays explained. “If you have to spend $10-$20 billion or more to get a large-scale LEO constellation off the ground, that’s out of reach for the vast majority of private equity investors.”