According to Point Topic, broadband value-added services for business users showed revenue growth of just over 60 percent during 2004. At the start of 2004, revenue was running at a yearly rate of around $2.3 billion. This figure grew to $3.7 billion by year-end. This is the first time that it has been possible to estimate the growth of the new market. Value-added services are extremely important for service providers, who need to find ways of increasing revenues from broadband services. As broadband connection tariffs become more competitive in price, value-added services are the most important way of increasing margins for service providers. This makes these 2004 results important for ISPs serving the business market. Growth in BVAS revenues was lower than the rate of growth in the number of business broadband lines. These grew from 10.6 million to 19 million during 2004, an increase of 79 percent. Most businesses continue to obtain and use their broadband connections just for Internet access and related applications such as email. Relatively few use broadband to increase the efficiency of their internal business processes. Business broadband access revenues (the total revenue from installation and connection charges) grew more slowly than the number of lines during 2004, increasing by just under 50 percent from $13 billion to $19 billion. This was because of reducing average tariff levels during the year.
Gartner's latest worldwide IT spending forecast exposes a trend every CIO has already felt in budget negotiations. Total spending will climb 14.2 percent in 2026, reaching $6.37 trillion. It seems that the IT infrastructure market is simply having a strong year. However, the more useful insight is how unevenly that growth is distributed. The Headline Number vs. The Real Story Data center systems and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are absorbing capital at a pace several multiples faster than devices, communications services, and traditional IT services. This is not incremental growth spread across a healthy portfolio. It is a wholesale reallocation of enterprise technology budgets toward AI infrastructure, made on the expectation that demand for AI workloads will justify the outlay before that demand has been fully proven. Where the Money is Going Data center systems are forecast to grow 62.5 percent in 2026, that's up from 51.6 percent growth in 2025, reaching $822 billion....