Nokia, NTT Data, and Telefónica Tech were ranked as champion private network vendors among five other organizations, according to Kaleido Intelligence’s research.

The London-based specialist telecom consulting and market research firm, Kaleido Intelligence, released its Private Networks Vendor Hub: Competitive Analysis 2025-26, with insights into 49 established and emerging private network service providers.

Alongside the big-name trio, Druid Software, Ericsson, Syniverse, Tata Communications, and ZTE also achieved champion status in their respective categories.

James Moar, research author and principal analyst at Kaleido Intelligence, said: “The private network ecosystem has undergone several shifts in the past year, but the leading players have continued to innovate in the space.

“We’re seeing more AI integrations and flexible tools deployed to help with network management, as well as several new hardware features that will ultimately move the space towards a more plug-and-play environment.”

Moar added that innovation is not only confined to the leading players, with “some highly capable challengers emerging” in the market.

Nokia was one of the recurring leaders from the research, being rated the top vendor for private network software and hardware for the third year running, as well as retaining champion status for its end-to-end managed service offering and strong industrial edge computing and network monitoring solutions, Kaleido Intelligence determined.

Prakash Sadagopan, head of mission-critical enterprise, global sales and customer organization at Nokia, said: “Leveraging our deep telecommunications industry expertise, we designed the world’s leading fit-for-mission critical enterprise networks. Our solutions deliver secure, trusted, and deterministic autonomous networks and innovate to help accelerate digitalization in industrial segments, utilities, railways, and public sectors.”

NTT Data also remained a champion for private network management, with a solid integrated offering, a large ecosystem of software partners, and connectivity management tools, according to the research.

Parm Sandhu, VP of enterprise 5G products and services at NTT Data, said: “Our Private 5G network and Edge AI compute platform, backed by strong global delivery and managed services, enable customers to scale secure, high-performance networks that support advanced AI-driven use cases to next-generation industrial automation.”

Nokia made a series of significant changes to its operations in November last year in a bid to reach $3.2 billion profitability by 2028, as long-time mobile president Tommi Uitto departed the firm.

Its new Mobile Infrastructure segment will integrate Nokia’s Core Networks, Radio Networks, and Technology Standards, enabling telecom developments in AI-native networks and 6G. The unit will also focus on radio network technologies and services, following on from the launch of Nokia’s new "home of radio," a 3,000-strong campus based in Oulu, Finland.

In another recent collaboration, NTT Group, NTT Data’s parent, became the latest firm to join the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) to advance AI and HPC networking, looking to take the longstanding protocol to the next level, ensuring Ethernet can support high-performance workloads.

NTT said its UEC participation will help it add value for its Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) photonic networking solutions. Its engineers have been steadily building out its IOWN offerings to kickstart commercial deployments by 2030.