‘We can’t touch the Core’: the sentence that’s slowing telecom down
In telecom legacy systems, treating the core as untouchable shifts innovation to surrounding layers, where incremental integrations, duplicated logic and reactive extensions compound into architectural sprawl. That sprawl increases IT cost, slows product velocity and introduces operational drag not because of inadequate investment, but because change propagates across fragmented system boundaries. Telecom modernization becomes effective only when leaders deliberately redefine what the core should own, clarify system boundaries and treat integration as a first-class capability. The central decision is whether the current telecom IT architecture makes change progressively safer and more predictable, or progressively heavier and more fragile.
Razvan Cozma - 25 Feb 2026
