It’s been a big year for networking. Nvidia reminded the world it’s the essential plumbing behind the world’s AI dreams, and big-buck deals like Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Juniper were a reminder of networking’s market potency.

As such, networking won big in 2025. But they can’t all be winners, as they say, and the year saw its fair share of … well, losers is probably a little unfair, but let’s say some companies, technologies, and even continents weren’t on the winning team, unfortunately.

In that spirit, SDxCentral presents its winners and losers of 2025. Do not take our editor's picks as investment advice, and certainly do not take it personally if you were any of the unlucky ones this year. There’s always an opportunity to turn things around in 2026.

WINNER: EchoStar/Charlie Ergen

EchoStar this year finally completed its decades-long task of not having to be a real wireless telecommunications provider and instead fulfilled its goal of being a spectrum profiteer.

The company, headed by long-time communications executive and darn-good poker player Charlie Ergen, had spent untold leveraged billions acquiring wireless spectrum licenses. It then tapped into every leveraged regulatory, financial, and technology loophole to build out a network to just keep control of those licenses until it could find a willing buyer.

Sure, the carrier managed to garner some service accolades, boosted by a dearth of actual users on the network. But, despite at-times convincing comments from company executives, there seemed to be no desire by EchoStar/Dish Wireless/Boost Mobile to be a real player in the market.

That long-game paid off handsomely this year as EchoStar was able to turn those licenses into an approximately $40 billion payout that freed the carrier from having to compete in the highly competitive wireless communications space.

- Dan Meyer, Executive Editor

LOSER: Colt Technology Services

Not to kick a "loser" when they’re down, but Colt Technology Services had a rough year. As you may recall, the British telecom operator was taken offline in August due to a ransomware attack. At one point, ransomware group WarLoc was reportedly selling a million Colt company documents for the price of $200,000, with employee and financial data reportedly in that haul.

Nothing too crazy there, especially considering stateside operators are still smarting from last year’s Salt Typhoon escapade, dubbed the worst telecom hack in U.S. history. But Colt’s blackout was tipped to last into December, and they’re still working on their recovery efforts.

I’m sure they’ll be up and running by Christmas. It’s their first security breach; Colt even earned some notable secure access service edge (SASE) plaudits a year ago.

But to limp along for four months is a bad look, especially when lessons should have been learnt after Salt Typhoon (although did anyone really learn from that?)

I also wonder how seriously people are taking their recently launched promise of service delivery on time or two months of your money back.

They’re even talking about quantum era data safety on their LinkedIn page.

What about current-era safety, guys?

- Giacomo Lee, News Editor

WINNER: Intel

What a difference 12 months make. December 2024 saw the tacit retirement of Pat Gelsinger after a “challenging year.” Its stock price teetered around the $20 mark, major expansion projects were put on ice, and staff were facing the axe left and right.

So to find itself a winner in 2025 is something of a miracle. That’s not to say things are entirely rosy at the Santa Clara-based firm: CEO Lip-Bu Tan finds himself under the cosh for potential conflicts of interest after suggesting the company invest in Rivos – a company he was also chair of at the time.

But at the time of writing, the embattled chip firm finds its stock price at more than $37 per share, a level not seen since March 2024. It’s also got backing from the U.S. government, which took a 9.9% stake in the company back in August, in what’s seen as President Trump’s attempt to counter the leadership of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

It’s also buoyed by a $5 billion investment from Nvidia, with the world’s hottest company and darling of the tech industry signing on to jointly develop custom data center and PC hardware, the latter a major play given Intel’s x86 dominance in the gaming market. Meanwhile, SoftBank has also entered the fray, injecting a further $2 billion.

And now Intel finds itself wanting to keep hold of assets it previously deemed surplus to requirements, chiefly its Network and Edge Group (NEX), which had looked dead certain to end up in the hands of Ericsson.

These sizable cash injections and strategic U-turns won’t save the company overnight. Intel is an oil tanker; it can’t be turned like a speedboat. And that analogy is apt, as this time last year, it looked more like the Ever Given: a hulking, slow-moving entity totally stuck based on its own leadership malaise.

With the right focus, financial backers, and support, Intel will unstick itself just as the Ever Given did, with the groundwork laid in 2025 acting as an updraft lifting it in the right direction. Here’s hoping Tan and co can keep things afloat.

- Ben Wodecki, Senior Editor

LOSER: Private 5G

Private 5G has been one of many business use cases that seem so obvious yet have not been able to strike gold.

The private 5G space has, for years, been viewed as the one use case that would unlock operator revenue streams and make the untold billions of dollars spent on 5G network deployments all worthwhile.

Analysts, service providers, vendors, and customers have been touting the potential, opportunity, and operational success of private 5G deployments, and yet the market has returned only a fraction of what has been promised.

More disheartening, a number of those big names have started to retreat from the market. Some blame technical challenges, while others point to the lack of clear returns on investments.

While private 5G may yet turn out to be a viable revenue generator, the past 12 months have not bolstered confidence in that outcome.

- Dan Meyer, Executive Editor

WINNER: Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks made the second-biggest acquisition in 2025 when it bought access management firm CyberArk for a cool $25 billion.

You’d think it would have stopped there, but then it went on to buy observability name Chronosphere for $3.35 billion. Not as large a coup, but not pocket change, either.

Unlike other acquisitions we’ve seen over the year, such as HPE and Juniper, there was no hand-wringing. It wasn’t that kind of deal. But there was not much discussion, either, as the CyberArk just sort of made sense considering Palo Alto’s ambitions to build out an end-to-end platform.

Analysts agreed, although they said packaging was key: identity buyers are not in the traditional cloud and network customer set for Palo Alto. Nor is it assured whether network security is ready or even hungry for an all-in-one solution.

But still, Palo’s move remains a shrewd bet thanks to all things agentic. With a greater number of AI agents, the more identity issues arise in parsing between human and non-human users on the network. As soon as Palo bought CyberArk, other vendors began making their own identity updates left, right, and center.

Palo Alto itself has also stood out by not shedding execs as its rivals and tech giant names have done across the year. Sure, it lost its founder and CTO Nir Zuk, but CEO Nikesh Arora remains, and the new CTO is an in-hire promotion. The ship seems steady and will likely remain so in 2026.

- Giacomo Lee, News Editor

LOSER: Employees (job cuts)

For all the hundreds of billions of dollars being bandied around, the hardest news to write is when cuts come. And 2025 was no different.

According to TrueUp’s Layoffs Tracker, so far this year there have been 708 layoffs at tech companies with 209,215 people impacted – that equates to 599 people per day, a truly staggering number.

F5, Ericsson, Comcast, Broadcom, and EchoStar were among a host of firms slashing roles this past year. The turn of the year saw some of the biggest names announce layoffs, including Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon all swinging the hatchet in January. Microsoft went on to axe staff three more times in 2025, while hyperscale rival Oracle made vast cuts around the world, with staff in Canada and India largely affected. Intel has cut thousands of staff in the past 12 months, with several hundred employees at its research and development centers in Israel affected.

For all the investments in AI, it’s the staff left to make way in order to cover the costs.

Take Verizon, which is spending $20 billion to acquire Frontier Communications. In November, the carrier said it intends to slash more than 13,000 employees from its payroll, and claimed more than 80% of those employees were “exiting the business in December 2025.”

And how about Cisco: the vendor announced in August plans to cut more than 150 employees in yet another round of layoffs, just days after CEO Chuck Robbins said the company would not be slicing jobs in favor of AI.

Unfortunately, expect employees to lose out yet again in 2026.

- Ben Wodecki, Senior Editor

Need more? Make sure to check out Pt. 2 and Pt. 3 of our winners and losers.