The UK Government has published its UK Compute Roadmap, setting out how it will scale national compute capacity to support AI, research and economic growth. Alongside this, recent announcements on AI Growth Zones and fusion investment reinforce a broader shift: compute, energy and digital infrastructure are now being treated as a single, interdependent system.

Mobile World Congress 2026 reinforced that the telecoms industry is entering a new phase. The focus is shifting away from deploying connectivity infrastructure toward extracting economic value from networks through real-world applications.

The UK Government has renewed its regulatory steer to Ofcom, prioritizing 5G evolution, infrastructure competition, and resilience. This briefing note breaks down the five key priorities and what they mean practically for Local Authorities and Network Operators.