Q3 2026 in review
The access layer is being claimed.
Lumen closed Alkira, Comcast Business opened its last mile, Zayo put AI agents to work on a production network, and Megaport moved into compute. Five signals from the quarter, and what each one means for operators, GPU and neocloud providers, and data centers.
From the editor
The big players moved on the access layer
In August we started tracking the NaaS market every quarter and sharing the read with the operators we work with. This is Edition 02, the first one we are sending wide.
Q3 was the quarter the big players moved on the access layer. Lumen closed its US$475M purchase of Alkira and now counts more than 3,000 NaaS customers. Comcast Business opened its last mile to Equinix and began automating cross-border orders with Colt on LSO APIs. Zayo put its customers’ AI agents to work on a production network, on the platform we build. Equinix announced an inference exchange with NVIDIA and Together AI. Analysts now expect compute to be about 60% of Megaport’s revenue by 2030.
They are all reaching for the same position: the place where an enterprise finds intelligence, buys it, and gets a private path to it. I wrote about that position in Who Owns the On‑Ramp to Intelligence? This edition tracks who moved toward it, with the numbers.
If you read any of it differently, tell me. It sharpens the next edition.
In this edition
- The quarter in numbers and the deal sheet
- 01Signal 01: The platform layer is being bought, and it is scaling
- 02Signal 02: NaaS goes cross-carrier
- 03Signal 03: Agents became a buyer
- The agent-readiness table refreshed every edition
- 04Signal 04: Compute is landing, the road to it is not built
- 05Signal 05: Operator math
- Field notes Austin, Boston and London
- Watch list Q4 2026 to Q1 2027
- About insidepacket operator agnostic, no direct enterprise sales
- Subscribe one email a quarter
- Sources
The quarter in numbers
Eight numbers that carry Q3
Platform money, adoption, the operator mix, and the move into compute.
Deal sheet, Q3 2026
| Date | Deal | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| 18 Sep | Nscale files for a NYSE listing | US$103.4B active and contracted TCV; about 461,000 GPUs14 |
| 8 Sep | Mistral raises a Series D | €3B at €21B post-money, partly for compute13 |
| 2 Sep | CPP Investments and Equinix complete atNorth | US$4B, Nordic high-density data centers12 |
| 20 Aug | Charter completes Cox | Spectrum Business joins Cox Business, Segra and RapidScale11 |
| 13 Jul | Zayo names a new CEO | Sowmyanarayan Sampath, effective 1 Sep9 |
| 7 Jul | Lumen completes Alkira | US$475M cash1,2 |
| 29 Jun | Verizon and BT agree a 50:50 JV | International enterprise wireline: about US$4B revenue, 3,000+ customers, 180+ countries; completion in 202710 |
The deal sheet is a standing box: every material deal across NaaS, fiber, data centers and neoclouds in the quarter, newest first.
Signal 01 · The platform layer is being bought, and it is scaling
Lumen paid US$475M for a control plane and tripled its NaaS customers in a year
The layer above the fiber is being bought and filled at the same time. Lumen closed Alkira on 7 July, then pushed its cloud networking far past its own footprint.
Lumen’s price for Alkira, a multicloud control plane with no fiber under it. About 4,000 Lumen staff have been trained on it.1,2,7
What happened
- Lumen closed Alkira: the US$475M cash deal for the multicloud networking platform closed on 7 Jul.1,2 Lumen plans to merge Alkira and Lumen Connect over 18 months,5 and its CEO says Alkira will “accelerate our strategic revenue growth curve”.7
- Adoption kept compounding: Lumen reported more than 3,000 NaaS customers in Q2, against 1,000 a year earlier. New customer adoption rose 22%, active ports 34% and active services 29%, all against Q1.3,4 More than one in five first-time NaaS buyers was new to Lumen.5
- Reach past the footprint: on 26 Aug Lumen extended its Multi-Cloud Gateway so more than 10 million US business locations can reach its private cloud networking.6
- Recognition at Zayo: Zayo’s DynamicLink won a 2026 CRN Tech Innovator Award in the Networking Enterprise category.8
What it means for you
Operators
The layer above the port now has a market price: US$475M for a control plane with no fiber under it. Lumen’s numbers show what it does once installed: more customers, more ports, and new logos.
GPU and neocloud providers
Carrier platforms now reach well past their own fiber, 10 million locations in Lumen’s case. That is the reach you need to serve enterprises without building a network.
DC and colo providers
Sites listed on these platforms become destinations an enterprise can order in minutes. Sites off them stay manual.
Lumen’s Q3 results, the first quarter with Alkira inside (date not yet set; last year 30 Oct), and whether NaaS customer growth holds.
Signal 02 · NaaS goes cross-carrier
Carriers started selling through each other’s platforms
In one quarter Comcast Business opened its last mile to Equinix Fabric customers and began automating cross-border orders with Colt, both on Mplify’s LSO APIs. NaaS is moving from one operator’s portal to a supply chain of them.
Agentic ordering across both carriers, in five regions
Comcast Business last-mile Ethernet orderable inside Fabric
175+ providers tracked · 100+ in production or committed · 58+ direct API integrations live (June)
What happened
- Comcast Business and Colt (11 Aug): an Innovation Lab program that builds API interoperability on Mplify LSO and uses agentic workflows to discover, order and fulfil connectivity across both carriers, in North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.15
- Comcast Business and Equinix (10 Sep): Equinix Fabric customers can now order Comcast Business last-mile Ethernet through LSO-aligned APIs, with the goal of cutting delivery “from weeks to days”. Wavelengths, cloud and security come later. Comcast Business connects to 700+ data centers.16
- The standard is in production: Mplify tracks more than 175 providers on LSO, over 100 with production or committed deployments and 58 with direct LSO API integrations live.17 Its September awards went to Colt for inter-provider automation and to Lumen for ecosystem collaboration.19
“Advantage depends increasingly on what an organization can access, combine, automate, secure, assure, and deliver across an ecosystem, not simply what it owns.”
Stan Hubbard, Mplify, 10 Sep 202618
What it means for you
Operators
Another platform can now sell your last mile, and you can sell theirs. Decide whether your network is a supplier inside someone else’s portal or the platform customers order from.
GPU and neocloud providers
Standard APIs between carriers mean one integration can reach many last miles. Ask your connectivity partners which LSO partners they already trade with.
DC and colo providers
Equinix is now a storefront for a cable operator’s last mile. A facility platform that can sell partner access becomes part of the carrier’s route to market.
Wavelengths, cloud and security on the Comcast Business and Equinix link; whether other US cable and fiber operators open their last mile the same way; Mplify’s next AI-ready NaaS research.
Signal 03 · Agents became a buyer
AI agents got write access to the network
In June the open question was whether a network would answer an AI agent at all. By September Zayo had agents taking authorized actions in production, and Equinix had opened its Fabric MCP server to public preview.
What happened
- Zayo Agentic Networking (8 Sep): Zayo introduced what it calls “the industry’s first production Model Context Protocol (MCP) server built specifically for networking” on DynamicLink. Approved enterprise agents see network state and take authorized actions; “organizations define the information, tools, and actions available to agents”.20,21
- Equinix (31 Aug and 2 Sep): the Fabric MCP server moved from private beta to public preview, and agents can create and update connections, with deletes kept in the portal.22,23 Fabric One takes “agent-based requests or natural-language prompts” to set up any-to-any connectivity; beta later this year, general availability in 2027.24
- Digital Realty: ServiceFabric MCP, launched in June, runs a read-only and a read-write server across 800+ Digital Realty and third-party data centers. Its docs still call it early access.25,26
- Megaport: its MCP server, launched in June, is still an open beta and read only, with write access promised “soon”.27,28
- Inside the carriers: NVIDIA puts telco automation at Level 2 to 3 of TM Forum’s autonomy scale and says Level 4 to 5 takes autonomous agents.29 Lumen, AT&T, Verizon and Colt run agents internally; none offers customers a public agent interface yet.30,32,33
“The future of networking is not another portal. It’s making network capabilities available within the AI systems enterprises use to run their business.”
Max Clauson, Zayo, 8 Sep 202620
Disclosure: insidepacket builds the platform under Zayo’s DynamicLink.
What it means for you
Operators
The buyer now includes software. If a customer’s agent cannot see and change your services, the order goes through a platform that can.
GPU and neocloud providers
Your customers’ agents will provision compute and the path to it in one flow. Choose connectivity partners whose networks agents can operate, not only query.
DC and colo providers
Two of the largest interconnection platforms now expose agent interfaces. Your facility’s services need the same door, or agents order around them.
Write access at Megaport; general availability of Equinix Fabric MCP; the first published cases of enterprise agents ordering connectivity in production.
The agent-readiness table · refreshed every edition
Which NaaS platforms can AI agents operate?
Six platforms now let a customer’s AI agent in. One runs agent-driven changes in production with general availability.
| Platform | What a customer’s agent can do | Status | Since |
|---|---|---|---|
| DynamicLink, Agentic NetworkingZayo | Read network context and take authorized actions; the customer sets the tools and actions20 | Production | 8 Sep 2026 |
| ServiceFabric MCPDigital Realty | A read-only server plus a read-write server for network changes and bare metal lifecycle25,26 | Early access release says available | 17 Jun 2026 |
| Fabric MCPEquinix | Read, create and update connections and Cloud Routers; deletes stay in the portal22,23 | Public previewno GA date | 31 Aug 2026 |
| Alkira MCPLumen, since 7 Jul | Read; proposes changes that a person approves34,2 | Launched | 30 Sep 2025 |
| Megaport MCP ServerMegaport | Read only; write access promised “soon”27,28 | Open beta | 5 Jun 2026 |
| Fabric OneEquinix | Agent-based and natural-language requests to provision connectivity; MCP not named24 | Beta late 2026GA in 2027 | 2 Sep 2026 |
| Lumen ConnectLumen | No public agent interface; support assistants only; internal MCP proof of concept30,31 | Internal | Nov 2025 |
| Console Connect, PacketFabric, Colt, AT&T, Verizon, GTT | No public agent interface found | None found | Checked Sep 2026 |
insidepacket builds the platform under Zayo’s DynamicLink.
Signal 04 · Compute is landing, the road to it is not built
The compute is landing. The road to it is not built.
Q3 money went to GPU pools and long-haul fiber. The access layer between an enterprise and a GPU is the part still being assembled.
Compute
- Megaport: about A$965M TCVacross seven AI contracts
- Nscale: 1.37 GW activeand contracted
- Equinix Inference Exchangewith NVIDIA, from Q1 2027
- Spectrum edge computereach into 1,000+ sites
Where the GPUs land
Fabric
- Zayo and NVIDIA: 8,000+miles of new long-haul fiber along AI corridors
- Zayo and Corning: supplyfor 15,000 new route miles by 2030
Between the AI factories
Also in the quarter: GTT launched Defense Halo, network defense on its own AI factory with data held in the US, UK or EU (29 Sep).40 Mistral plans up to 1 GW by 2030.41 The EuroHPC call for AI gigafactories closes on 3 Dec.42 S&P’s consensus read puts compute at about 60% of Megaport revenue by 2030.37
What it means for you
Operators
The GPU money is landing on your fiber’s doorstep. The revenue line is the connection between enterprises and those GPUs; if you do not sell it, an exchange on top of your fiber will.
GPU and neocloud providers
Utilization decides your economics, and enterprise access decides utilization. Each customer you connect in minutes rather than weeks moves you toward break-even.
DC and colo providers
Inference pulls compute toward users, so metro and edge sites gain value. Sites with orderable paths to GPU capacity are placed to win those workloads.
Equinix Inference Exchange (Q1 2027) and the Fabric One beta; Megaport’s next AI contracts; Nscale’s listing; the EuroHPC gigafactory selections.
Signal 05 · Operator math
Connectivity barely grows. What runs on top of it does.
Q2 results, reported in Q3, drew the same line at every operator: legacy shrinking, connectivity flat, advanced services and platforms growing. Buyers are moving from research to purchase.
What happened
- The mix is moving: Comcast Business connectivity revenue rose 3.7% to US$2.67B.50 CFO Jason Armstrong said Comcast now sells about $0.70 of advanced solutions for every $1 of connectivity, up from $0.20 three years ago.51
- Legacy runs down: AT&T expects legacy service revenue to fall 20%+ in 2026 and to be “immaterial by the end of 2029”.52 Lumen’s revenue fell 9% in the same quarter its NaaS customers passed 3,000.3
- Buyers are moving: in TeleGeography’s WAN manager survey, 17% have bought NaaS and 25% are researching it, up from 8% in 2022; 19% decided against. Short NaaS terms carry a 10% to 35% premium, and Europe’s median 10G port costs US$350 a month, 2.3 times the 1G price.55
- Consolidation: Charter closed Cox on 20 Aug,11 and Verizon and BT agreed a JV for international enterprise wireline.10 Vertical Systems’ mid-2026 US Carrier Ethernet ranking moved Verizon to second and brought Zayo in at sixth.56
What it means for you
Operators
Growth sits in what you sell on top of the port. That mix is the number to manage, and it moves only when customers can order more than circuits.
GPU and neocloud providers
Operators are hunting for growth on top of their networks, which makes them willing partners to carry your services to their enterprise customers.
DC and colo providers
Consolidation means fewer, larger carriers in your buildings. The ones customers can order through your platform matter more.
AT&T (21 Oct) and Comcast (22 Oct) Q3 results; Lumen, Verizon and Equinix dates still to be announced; Megaport’s H1 FY27 results, expected in February.
Field notes
What came out of Austin and Boston, and what London will add
Notes from the rooms where operators, data centers and GPU providers met this quarter.
Boston · Mplify Member Summit · 22 to 24 Sep
- The AI gateway became a pitch: three sessions offered service providers the gateway role between enterprise AI demand and GPU capacity. One startup demoed providers becoming that gateway to distributed GPU clusters. PCCW Global presented AI as a service through Console Connect as an “AI Gateway”. NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS combined GPUaaS and NaaS, with GPUs billed by the minute.64
- Agents moved into the architecture: Mplify’s agentic LSO blueprint runs on MCP servers. Amartus, NTT DOCOMO and Colt showed agents troubleshooting together across providers, and another demo had AI agents negotiate deals between carriers.64
- Federation is next: sessions laid out the path to launching NaaS federation, with trusted identity for agents.64
- Operators set the destination: Comcast Business spoke on “the network that provisions itself”, AT&T on “the AI-grade network”, and Verizon on automating wholesale partners.64
Austin · Metro Connect Fall · 1 to 3 Sep
- Mid-size fiber operators are ready: in three meetings with mid-size regional fiber operators, every team understood the NaaS use cases. Interest in AI agents running the network was growing, and off-net reach was the gap they raised.
- Three priorities from the floor: more talent, more resilience, and meaningful redundancy.57
- The program asked the right questions: whether today’s networks are fit for an inference-led world, and whether the consolidation wave is speeding up.58 Outside, protesters objected to data center water and power use.
“A second circuit is not meaningful redundancy if it shares the same duct, facility, power dependency or operational bottleneck as the first.”
insidepacket, Metro Connect takeaways, 11 Sep57
London · Capacity Europe · 13 to 15 Oct59
Watch list
The dates that will move the next edition
Earnings, events and launches between send day and Edition 03.
Who we are
We build it. You sell it.
About insidepacket. We build the NaaS platform that operators, data centers and GPU providers run under their own brand. Zayo’s DynamicLink runs on it in production.
Operator agnostic
The platform runs over any operator’s network. No single carrier is required.
No direct enterprise sales
We sell to the providers who serve enterprises, never around them. They keep the customer, the brand and the pricing.
New: the AI Access Platform Embargoed to 13 Oct
Launched at Capacity Europe on 13 Oct. GPU, neocloud and data center providers use it to give enterprises private, on-demand access to their capacity, over any operator’s network.
Subscribe
Get the NaaS Market Brief every quarter
Five signals, the numbers behind them and the dates to watch, for operators, GPU and neocloud providers, and data centers. Edition 03 lands in January.
Read it differently? Tell us.
Reply to the email this edition came with. Every answer shapes Edition 03, due in January.
- Which of the five signals matters most to your business in 2027?
- Which platform should the agent-readiness table add next?
- Which market should get its own page next time?
Sources
Every figure, where it came from
- 1. Reuters via Yahoo Finance, Lumen to acquire Alkira for $475 million, 5 May 2026
- 2. Lumen via Business Wire, Lumen Completes Alkira Acquisition, 7 Jul 2026
- 3. Lumen, Q2 2026 results, 8-K exhibit 99.1, 4 Aug 2026
- 4. Lumen, Lumen Doubles NaaS Customer Base, 24 Feb 2026
- 5. Nasdaq, Lumen Q2 Earnings Call Highlights, 5 Aug 2026
- 6. Lumen, Cloud Networking Access to 10 Million US Locations, 26 Aug 2026
- 7. Lightwave, Lumen’s CEO on Alkira and strategic revenue, 15 Sep 2026
- 8. Zayo via Business Wire, NaaS Platform Wins CRN Tech Innovator Award, 14 Aug 2026
- 9. Zayo via Business Wire, Planned CEO Transition, 13 Jul 2026
- 10. BT Group RNS, BT and Verizon joint venture, 29 Jun 2026
- 11. Charter, 8-K exhibit 99.1, Cox transaction, 20 Aug 2026
- 12. atNorth, CPP Investments and Equinix complete atNorth, 2 Sep 2026
- 13. Orrick, Mistral €3B Series D, Sep 2026
- 14. Nscale, Form S-1, SEC, 18 Sep 2026
- 15. Comcast Business, Innovation Lab program with Colt, 11 Aug 2026
- 16. Comcast Business via Business Wire, Last Mile Opens to Partner Platforms, Starting with Equinix, 10 Sep 2026
- 17. Mplify, LSO Solution Provider Landscape Report, 17 Jun 2026
- 18. Mplify Edge VIEW, NaaS State of the Industry, 10 Sep 2026
- 19. Mplify, 2026 NaaS Excellence Awards winners, 24 Sep 2026
- 20. Zayo, Zayo Launches Agentic Networking, 8 Sep 2026
- 21. Zayo, MCP server documentation
- 22. Equinix Community, Fabric MCP Server preview, 25 Aug 2026
- 23. Equinix, Fabric MCP server documentation
- 24. Equinix, Equinix Unveils Equinix Fabric One, 2 Sep 2026
- 25. Digital Realty via GlobeNewswire, ServiceFabric MCP, 17 Jun 2026
- 26. Digital Realty, ServiceFabric MCP documentation
- 27. Megaport, Introducing the Megaport MCP Server, 5 Jun 2026
- 28. Megaport, MCP server documentation
- 29. NVIDIA Technical Blog, Autonomous Networks with Agentic AI, 23 Jun 2026
- 30. Itential, Lumen network automation story
- 31. Lumen, AI tools documentation
- 32. SDxCentral, AT&T AI agents for network engineers, 14 Nov 2025
- 33. MWC Barcelona, Colt agentic AI engine with Microsoft, 2 Mar 2026
- 34. Alkira, Introducing Alkira MCP, 30 Sep 2025
- 35. Megaport, ASX: $506.2M of new AI contracts, 20 Aug 2026
- 36. Megaport, ASX: GPU pool, contracts and entitlement offer, 3 Jun 2026
- 37. S&P Global Market Intelligence, Compute to be nearly 60% of Megaport revenue by 2030, 3 Sep 2026
- 38. Equinix, AI inference with NVIDIA and Together AI, 2 Sep 2026
- 39. Charter, Spectrum AI computing at the edge, SCTE TechExpo 26, 28 Sep 2026
- 40. GTT, GTT Launches GTT Defense Halo, 29 Sep 2026
- 41. Mistral, In-region inference and new European infrastructure, 11 Aug 2026
- 42. EuroHPC JU, AI gigafactory call for tenders, 30 Jul 2026
- 43. Zayo via Business Wire, Zayo and NVIDIA, network capacity for AI factories, 6 Aug 2026
- 44. Corning, Zayo fiber supply agreement, 20 Aug 2026
- 45. Cast AI, 2026 State of Kubernetes Optimization Report, 21 Apr 2026
- 46. ModulEdge, How the Neocloud Business Works, 7 Jun 2026
- 47. Synergy Research, Neocloud market to approach $400B by 2031, 2 Apr 2026
- 48. Gartner, Neoclouds to take 20% of a $267B AI cloud market, 23 Jun 2026
- 49. ABI Research, The State of Neocloud: Four Trends for 2026, 3 Dec 2025
- 50. Comcast, Q2 2026 results, 8-K exhibit 99.1, 23 Jul 2026
- 51. Mitrade, Comcast Q2 2026 earnings call transcript, 24 Jul 2026
- 52. AT&T, Q2 2026 results, 8-K exhibits 99.1 and 99.2, 22 Jul 2026
- 53. Megaport, FY26 results, ASX, 20 Aug 2026
- 54. The Motley Fool Australia, Megaport on results day, 20 Aug, and after the fall, 26 Aug 2026
- 55. TeleGeography, NaaS Market Summary, 7 Aug 2026
- 56. Vertical Systems Group, Mid-2026 US Carrier Ethernet LEADERBOARD, 2 Sep 2026
- 57. insidepacket on LinkedIn, Metro Connect takeaways, 11 Sep 2026
- 58. Capacity, 8 sessions to watch at Metro Connect Fall, Aug 2026
- 59. Capacity, Capacity Europe and Global Connectivity Awards
- 60. AT&T, Q3 2026 earnings reminder
- 61. Finviz, Comcast Q3 2026 earnings call notice, Sep 2026
- 62. INCOMPAS, Broadband Nation Expo and PTC event pages
- 63. Megaport, H1 FY26 results, ASX, 20 Feb 2026
- 64. Mplify, Member Summit Americas agenda, Boston, 22 to 24 Sep 2026
- 65. Megaport, ASX: Successful Completion of Retail Entitlement Offer, 2 Jul 2026