GCCs powering the next wave of telco innovation 

Look beyond the signal bars, streaming apps and seamless video calls, and you'll find an industry undergoing a profound internal transformation.

Telecom has entered a post-connectivity era. While worldwide spending on telecom and pay-TV services was roughly $1.53 trillion in 2024, growth is no longer driven by bandwidth alone. Increasingly, value is moving towards the orchestration of 5G, AI, cloud and digital ecosystems - and in how these capabilities are productized, scaled and monetized.

This pivot brings complexity. Communications service providers (CSPs) are expected to modernize legacy estates, innovate faster, and launch new services at scale, all while containing costs and meeting compliance demands. Achieving this balance requires more than incremental technology change; it demands a new operating model.

One response gaining traction is the global capability center (GCC). Originally established to support operational efficiency, GCCs are now being integrated more directly into how telecom operators build, operate and scale critical technology capabilities.

How telcos are using GCCs in practice

Telecom operators globally are applying the GCC model in materially different ways:

• Vodafone (VOIS): Vodafone restructured its global shared-services organization into a scaled, commercially oriented unit, Vodafone Intelligent Solutions, supported by a €150 million minority investment from Accenture - an archetype of a GCC built for speed and scope across technology and operations.
• BT Group (India Hubs): BT has 14,000+ employees in India across Bengaluru, Gurugram and Kolkata, with India hosting a significant share of its digital organization focused on products, data, AI and cloud platforms supporting global programs.
• Telstra (India ICCs): Telstra launched Innovation & Capability Centres in Pune and Hyderabad, alongside a Network & Product Engineering Lab in Bengaluru, to accelerate next-generation network and platform engineering.
• Telenor (Global Shared Services): Telenor operates a captive global services organization delivering cloud-enabled, automated back-office platforms across regions, reporting strong internal satisfaction and operational consistency.
• Telekom Malaysia (GBS Centre): Telekom Malaysia launched an AI-enabled Global Business Services Centre to enhance productivity and digital service delivery, positioning the model as core transformation infrastructure.

Making the model work: Key challenges and how to address them

Despite their potential, GCCs are not turnkey. Extracting value requires deliberate design and sustained management attention.

• Strategic realignment - Moving from vendor-managed delivery to product and platform ownership is as much a cultural shift as an operational one.
  What helps: Shared OKRs across headquarters and GCCs, outcome-based funding models, and "two-in-a-box" leadership pairing global product owners with GCC engineering leads.
• Cultural integration and execution speed - Time-zone separation and distributed decision-making can slow progress.
  What helps: Defined working-hour overlaps, clearly codified decision rights, leadership rotation across locations, and lightweight engineering rituals such as demos and architecture reviews.
• Risk, IP and regulatory obligations - Telecom workloads are subject to strict data sovereignty, lawful-intercept and compliance requirements.
  What helps: Segmented environments, clear data-classification and residency guardrails, and secure-by-design SDLC practices embedded from the outset.

• Phased transitions - Migrating NOC, billing or CRM platforms takes quarters, not weeks.
  What helps: Structured discovery-to-scale transition models, dual-run periods, explicit error budgets and strong observability before cutover.
• Scope discipline - Not every function belongs in a GCC.
  What helps: Retaining regulatory interpretation and high-stakes negotiations close to headquarters, while moving repeatable, automatable work first under a clearly governed scope charter.

Balancing ambition With operational realities

As telecom operators rethink how transformation is executed, GCCs are emerging less as a sourcing construct and more as an operating-model choice. GCCs offer a practical mechanism to meet this challenge. When designed intentionally, they allow telcos to concentrate scarce skills, standardize engineering practices and accelerate delivery - without relinquishing control over intellectual property, security or regulatory compliance. In effect, they provide a way to reconcile the need for speed and innovation with the operational rigor that telecom environments demand.

However, the model carries trade-offs. GCCs that lack clear product ownership, disciplined scope or strong integration with headquarters risk becoming fragmented execution arms rather than capability builders. Similarly, attempts to move complex workloads too quickly - particularly in areas such as network operations or customer platforms - often introduce instability rather than efficiency. The difference between success and underperformance is rarely location; it is governance, sequencing and accountability.

For CSP leaders, the implications are concrete. GCC strategies should be anchored in explicit decisions about which capabilities are core, which can be scaled globally, and how risk is governed across distributed teams. Investment should follow outcomes - such as release velocity, service stability or customer experience improvements - rather than headcount expansion alone. And leadership models must reinforce shared ownership, not reinforce distance between headquarters and offshore teams.

As the telecom industry enters its next phase of evolution, execution discipline will increasingly define winners. Global capability centers, when aligned to a clear operating model, can play a decisive role in that equation - not as accelerators in isolation, but as repeatable engines for turning strategy into sustained delivery.