Revenue growth depends entirely on where a company stands in its lifecycle. The commercial strategies that drive results in an early stage company can undermine progress in a turnaround, while the tactics that fuel expansion may fail to gain traction in a business still searching for product-market fit.
“In a startup, you’re building everything from zero. There’s really no base to protect. Sometimes there is no playbook, so speed is your only currency,” says Edgar Mosti, Strategic Business & Network Development Advisor at IENTC Telecom. “A turnaround is the opposite discipline. You diagnose before you prescribe. Expansion is about scaling what you’ve already proven.”
Having led commercial leadership, go-to-market (GTM) strategy, infrastructure sales, and strategic alliances across carriers, data centers, and hyperscalers, Mosti views growth as a series of fundamentally different challenges. Understanding those differences is important as network infrastructure companies navigate AI-driven demand, evolving wholesale networks, and growing pressure to maximize infrastructure monetization.
Different Stages Require Different Growth Engines
Many executives make the mistake of applying a successful formula from one phase of growth to another; each environment requires a distinct commercial framework. For an early stage company, for example, the priority is establishing market relevance as quickly as possible. That means identifying ideal customer profiles, securing initial customers, and validating a GTM strategy before competitors define the market. Sales expansion is often driven by speed, adaptability, and relentless customer acquisition. Turnaround growth requires a different mindset. Before pursuing new revenue streams, leaders must address weaknesses in the existing business. “You can’t fill a bucket that has holes in it,” Mosti says.
Expansion environments present yet another challenge. Once a model is proven, organizations must scale channels, geographies, and talent while preserving the systems that made success possible. Referencing Jim Collins’ well-known principle, “What got you here won’t get you there,” says Mosti.
Trusted Relationships: The Fastest Route to Revenue
Whether the goal is how to scale wholesale divisions profitably or accelerate growth in a mature infrastructure business, partnerships frequently determine the speed of execution. Within wholesale networks and carrier ecosystems, procurement complexity can slow growth even when demand exists. “With carriers, getting on the preferred vendor list or inside a distributor is the fastest door,” he says. “It removes the procurement friction that kills early-stage deals.”
For data center operators, building direct executive relationships with procurement and operations teams creates a similar advantage. Organizations that become embedded in a customer’s supply chain early often become the path of least resistance for future opportunities.
Hyperscaler partnerships require even greater patience and precision. Direct engagement with major cloud providers can take years to mature. As a result, many successful infrastructure companies gain traction indirectly through ecosystem partners. “The fastest route is almost always indirect partnering through their ecosystem,” says Mosti. “Find the fastest lane into a trusted relationship and move through it.”
Beyond Connectivity to Unlock Higher Margins
One of the biggest shifts occurring across telecommunications is the commoditization of connectivity itself. Traditional bandwidth and transport services continue to face pricing pressure, forcing operators to rethink how they create value. “Raw connectivity is absolutely commoditizing,” says Mosti. “If you’re selling a pipe, you’re competing on price and that’s a race to the bottom.”
The companies generating sustainable revenue acceleration are building services around the infrastructure rather than relying solely on the infrastructure itself. Managed services, private 5G deployments, network slicing, and edge capabilities create opportunities for stronger margins and long-term differentiation.
This evolution is particularly important for companies focused on fiber monetization and infrastructure sales. Rather than viewing networks as standalone products, operators are increasingly packaging capabilities that solve broader business challenges. The result is revenue growth through strategic capacity deals and service-based offerings that create greater customer dependence while improving profitability.
AI Infrastructure Is Reshaping the Revenue Landscape
The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is creating a new generation of opportunities across digital infrastructure. While much attention remains focused on software and compute, Mosti sees the greatest value emerging from physical assets that are difficult to replicate. Power-dense facilities, diverse subsea routes, dark fiber landing stations, and strategic interconnection points are becoming increasingly valuable.
“The real upside is in the physical constraints that can’t be replicated quickly,” he says. This is particularly evident in dark fiber IRU (Indefeasible Right of Use) negotiation and deal structure, where long-term agreements can create predictable revenue streams while supporting hyperscaler expansion. As demand for AI infrastructure accelerates, organizations that control critical physical assets gain significant leverage.
“AI inferencing at the edge” is emerging as a critical growth area as latency requirements push computing resources closer to end users. “Whoever owns the physical infrastructure adjacent to those network nodes, the real estate, the fiber, the power, is going to be in an extraordinarily strong position,” he says.
Positioning for the Next Wave of Growth
The future of telecom and digital infrastructure growth will belong to organizations that understand the difference between building, repairing, and scaling revenue engines. Success increasingly depends on commercial leadership that combines strong GTM strategy with the ability to forge strategic alliances, secure hyperscaler partnerships, and identify new opportunities for infrastructure monetization.
As AI continues to reshape demand patterns and competition intensifies across global networks, the companies best positioned for growth will be those that treat revenue generation as a strategic discipline rather than a sales function. The objective is now building the partnerships, assets, and commercial frameworks capable of sustaining growth across every phase of the business lifecycle.
Follow Edgar Mosti on LinkedIn or visit his website for more insights.
