In 2026, enterprise communications leaders across EMEA face rising pressure to modernise, secure, and scale their environments. Cavell and Bandwidth jointly surveyed 500 IT and telecom decision‑makers at enterprises with 1,000+ employees headquartered in EMEA to understand how organisations are responding.
The findings from the State of EMEA Enterprise Communications report show careful, intentional progress. Enterprises are accelerating AI adoption and cloud migration while managing widening security threats, regulatory fragmentation, and the complexity of multi-country operations. Below are seven key insights from the research.
1. AI sits at the top of the priority list, but security is a close second
AI and machine learning implementation emerged as the top priority for 2026, cited by 49.4% of respondents. Security and fraud prevention followed closely at 45.8%. Cloud migration (35.2%) and hybrid cloud models (27.8%) ranked next.
The UK diverged from the regional pattern: respondents there placed security first and AI second. This likely reflects a more mature AI landscape, where organisations have already adopted AI at scale and are now focused on securing a larger and more interconnected communications stack. This interplay between AI‑driven operations and increased attack surfaces appears to reinforce the link between AI maturity and security prioritisation.
Cost reduction ranked fifth at 26%, followed by customer and agent experience improvement (23.2%), regulatory compliance (21.2%), and global expansion (20.8%).
Overall, AI is viewed both as a modernisation lever and a practical response to constrained budgets. Automation allows enterprises to enhance capabilities and support staff without increasing headcount—a dynamic that has accelerated interest in AI‑driven efficiencies.
2. Security, fraud, and compliance form a single, interconnected operational challenge
Security, fraud, and compliance risks were ranked as the most pressing challenges by 62.8% of enterprises—nearly 20 percentage points ahead of cloud migration (44%). Cost reduction followed at 33.8%, with other concerns such as delivery speed (31%), reliability and call quality (28%), training and adoption (24.8%), and user experience (24.6%) trailing behind.
Across EMEA, security, fraud, and compliance are increasingly treated as one blended operational risk category. Telecom environments must comply not only with global frameworks such as ISO and DORA, but also with country‑specific telecom requirements—ranging from France’s number management rules (MAN) to market‑specific anti‑fraud and identity requirements.
Customer behaviour adds another layer of complexity. Rising distrust of unknown numbers and stricter anti‑fraud controls from regulators and carriers are driving increased filtering and flagging of outbound calls. Two-thirds (66%) of enterprises reported that legitimate outbound calls had been incorrectly marked as spam or scam, with France (69.72%) and the UK (66.91%) most affected.
The business implications are substantial. One‑third of employees report lost revenue due to unreachable customers, and 60% of sales teams say call failures have directly cost them deals. What was once a back‑office technical issue has become a front‑line commercial and brand‑trust concern.
Telephony stability is another area of anxiety: 64% of enterprises worry their provider cannot maintain uptime as regulations evolve. The UK showed the greatest concern (68%), followed by Spain (64.95%) and France (53.21%).
3. Multi‑carrier setups are now standard practice across EMEA
EMEA’s telecom landscape remains structurally multi‑carrier. Enterprises use a median of 3.5 carriers, and nearly 67% work with two to five providers.
The top drivers are geographic coverage and compliance with in‑country regulations (63.36%), followed by platform or technology interoperability (49.89%). Other factors include regional autonomy, cost optimisation, data residency requirements, redundancy, and legacy contracts.
In response to this complexity, 46.4% of enterprises prefer a hybrid sourcing model: a global core carrier supported by local providers with in‑country regulatory expertise. Another 27.4% opt for a single global provider with multi‑country PSTN coverage, while 23.8% rely solely on national providers in each market.
Reliability is the top selection criterion when choosing a carrier, cited by 58% of respondents. Integration capability also ranks highly, reflecting the need to connect communications infrastructures to contact centres, CRMs, and AI systems while maintaining compliance across jurisdictions.
Although North American organisations are consolidating carriers as well, EMEA is unlikely to become a single‑provider region due to regulatory diversity and geographic scale. Most enterprises instead aim for “realistic consolidation”—a strong global core supplemented by targeted in‑country coverage and compliance support.
4. BYOC adoption has reached 80%
Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) has become the dominant telephony model across EMEA. More than 80% of enterprises now unbundle their telephony from their unified communications or contact centre platforms.
The main benefits of BYOC are integration flexibility (cited by 39%) and improved control over costs. BYOC success stories show how it enables enterprises to retain preferred national operators for PSTN connectivity while freely swapping UCaaS or CCaaS software platforms. This avoids vendor lock‑in, preserves regulatory expertise, and aligns with long‑standing regional practices.
EMEA’s history with PBX and on‑premises telephony—where enterprises frequently brought their own carriers—makes BYOC a natural extension of past architectural models. As ISDN transitioned to SIP, and SIP transitions to cloud‑based CCaaS, the logic of controlling carrier relationships has remained consistent.
This approach is especially attractive for enterprises managing diverse network requirements across multiple countries, where centralisation often conflicts with local compliance obligations.
5. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) carry most of the operational load
Managed service providers (MSPs) are nearly universal in EMEA communications. A striking 98.6% of enterprises use MSPs, typically working with one to three providers. The top responsibilities assigned to MSPs include end‑to‑end service management, multi‑vendor integration, and cloud migration or modernisation.
In practice, MSPs serve as operational partners rather than transactional vendors. Enterprises delegate day‑to‑day management of complex, multi‑vendor estates while retaining strategic oversight. This model is particularly important in EMEA, where geographical fragmentation and regulatory rigor create challenges that do not exist in more unified markets such as the US.
Security and compliance are the top criteria for selecting an MSP (53.4%), followed by service breadth and customisation (41.4%) and industry‑specific expertise (41%). Support quality, SLAs, pricing, proximity, and partner communication also factor into decisions.
Long‑term relationships depend on operational relief. MSPs that can coordinate integrations, manage multiple vendors, and maintain SLAs across regions effectively become strategic extensions of an enterprise’s internal team.
The most frequently referenced MSPs were major systems integrators such as Accenture, Capgemini, and Atos, with Computacentre and Opus Technologies also appearing prominently—highlighting the importance of scale, cross‑regional capability, and specialised industry knowledge.
6. Contact centres are hybrid—and likely to remain so
Most EMEA enterprises operate hybrid contact centre environments. Three‑quarters (74.8%) run at least part of their estate in the cloud, but full cloud migration remains relatively rare. Technology and software sector leads the pack with 17.68% fully migrated.
Hybrid architectures align well with EMEA’s structural conditions: uneven infrastructure quality, entrenched legacy systems, and diverse regulatory requirements. They also allow enterprises to modernise incrementally, preserving on‑premises investments where necessary.
Only 7% of respondents expect no changes to their contact centre footprint in the coming year. The overwhelming majority are modernising, but doing so gradually rather than replacing entire platforms.
Cloud maturity is correlated with integration flexibility. Organisations further along in the cloud journey tend to adopt more third‑party tools. CRM integrations are the most common (47.8%), followed by AI‑powered chatbots (41.4%).
CRM‑embedded calling is particularly notable. A large majority (91.8%) already use or plan to use calling features directly within their CRM. This trend does not replace traditional contact centre platforms, but enhances them—improving agent productivity through screen pops, automated call logging, and unified customer context.
Platform churn is also significant. About 46% of respondents switch communications platforms every one to two years. Consumer‑facing industries move the fastest, including Healthcare (44%), Finance and Banking (45%), Consumer Goods (36%), and Retail sectors reporting even higher churn rates.
7. AI adoption in the contact centre is layered, not wholesale
AI adoption is expanding rapidly, but enterprises are taking an incremental, layered approach. More than 65% are piloting or running five or more AI capabilities. The UK leads in active use.
The top AI capabilities planned for deployment in the next 12 months include chatbots for web or messaging (54%) and agent‑assist or real‑time guidance tools (50.6%). Other widely adopted capabilities include real‑time translation (49.4%), automated call summarisation (48.8%), voicebots and conversational IVR (44.8%), and call transcription (43.6%).
This layering strategy aligns with both operational realities and regulatory constraints. Rather than replacing human agents, enterprises use AI to augment staff—automating repetitive tasks and providing real‑time support. This approach supports A/B testing, rollback flexibility, and human oversight, which is especially important in regulated industries where consistency and compliance are essential.
Across markets, the pattern is clear: AI is becoming deeply integrated, but not disruptive. Productivity gains come from targeted efficiencies—reduced manual tasks, faster context retrieval, and streamlined verification steps.
Industry‑level differences are significant
• Finance and Banking show the strongest focus on security, fraud, and compliance (75.47%) and above‑average AI priorities (60%).
• Retail and E‑commerce prioritise reach and efficiency, reporting the highest rate of outbound spam‑flagging (72.55%) and strong interest in CRM‑embedded calling (76.47%).
• Technology and software firms track closely with regional averages but report slightly elevated cloud‑migration pressure and spam‑labelling issues.
The broader pattern
EMEA enterprises are modernising at pace, but through an approach shaped by regional realities. Unlike North America—where earlier cloud investments and unified regulatory environments have enabled faster consolidation—EMEA organisations operate within fragmented regulatory requirements, multi‑country carrier dynamics, and deeply embedded legacy systems.
Rather than pursuing aggressive rip‑and‑replace strategies, enterprises are prioritising adaptability. Hybrid cloud models, BYOC adoption, multi‑carrier optimisation, and layered AI deployment all reflect a common principle: modernise what must change while maintaining reliability and compliance.
These two anchors—reliability and compliance—remain central to the enterprise communications strategy. Everything else is engineered to flex around them.
Methodology
Cavell and Bandwidth surveyed 500 IT and telecom decision-makers at global organisations with 1,000+ employees headquartered in EMEA. Respondents held senior manager, C-suite or business owner roles across finance, retail, technology, manufacturing, professional services, healthcare, construction, consumer goods, automotive, transportation and logistics, and energy. The majority of responses came from the UK, France, and Spain.
