Innovation in the communications space is coming from some very unlikely players, judging by the Agenda Setters list. Jo Best looks at what this means for the future of the major mobile operators and telcos.

Take a look down the Agenda Setters top 50 and you might be surprised to see many of the usual suspects in the telecoms and wireless arena aren't there.

Representatives from Motorola, Nokia, Vodafone and other operators are all conspicuous by their absence. Only Matt Bross, CTO at BT, represents the old school of telecoms companies.

Those worth watching, say the panel, are those non-traditional comms providers. Last year Niklas Zennström made the top 10 for his vision of a world that used free VoIP. Now the disruptive emphasis has shifted to the bundlers.

The presence of Carphone Warehouse CEO Charles Dunstone (number 38) and BSkyB chief James Murdoch (number 21) are both indications of how the telecoms market has shifted - and how this trend is expected to continue. Carphone used to be a cheap landline company, now it does 'free broadband' too. BSkyB used to be a pay TV company, now it flogs VoIP and broadband.

The changes seem to have caught the mobile companies on the hop. Orange was spurred into offering its own 'free' connectivity plan, O2 bought an ISP and even grande dame Vodafone committed to reselling BT's DSL.

According to the Agenda Setters panel, innovation at the telcos is no more. One panellist said: "[Telcos are] all shopping at Woolworths, buying their kit, gluing it together and calling it innovation. The days of R&D at telcos are long gone, I'm afraid."

Telecoms' new kids on the block are also held up as an example of another trend dominating the Agenda Setters list this year: commoditisation - knocking out kit at cheap and cheerful prices and turning what was once high-end equipment into a living room staple.

This means Sky is giving away routers to those taking up its broadband products and BT is knocking out similar souped-up devices called Home Hubs to encourage its customers to dabble with new services.

Nevertheless, the list does feature its fair share of big names in the equipment space. Both Huawei Technologies and Cisco make the list. Cisco CEO John Chambers comes in at number 26 for the company's dominance in networking and his own outspoken tendencies in the world political stage. Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei comes in just one spot above Chambers for taking advantage of low costs in China and using massive R&D centres to become the Tesco of networking equipment.

Commoditisation is also playing a part in the service world. George Polk, CEO of wi-fi company The Cloud, was ranked at number 12 - the highest spot on the list for any communications player. His company is putting wireless across several big cities in the UK as well as the City of London. It's also shaved its pricing for an all-you-can-eat wi-fi offering - yet another example of how 'the little guys' could potentially prove disruptive to large telecoms players by taking connections off BT and even theoretically turning the spectre of mobile VoIP into something more substantial.

Even one Agenda Setter better known for hardware is mixing up the telecoms space. Nicholas Negroponte won the number 6 spot for his One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which has opted for mesh networking to connect up its low-cost laptops in developing countries.

While the details of how this mesh networking will work are yet to be nailed down, the idea is certainly a powerful one. Under mesh networking, a PC acts as both client and router which, in the case of the OLPC, could potentially mean that rural areas in poor countries that don't yet have landline connectivity will soon find themselves with both internet access and a comms infrastructure in the form of VoIP. It's a powerful and fascinating idea and a not inconsiderable threat to mobile operators and telcos alike.

But what of the old school? Skype's Zennström makes another appearance on the list at number 10. The company's acquisition by eBay would indicate the once upstart is now part of the establishment but Zennström was picked by our panel as the poster boy for VoIP, which is still freaking out the incumbent providers after all these years.