Skip to main content

Global Telecom Service Provider Investment

Infonetics Research released the second edition of its 2009 telecom Service Provider Capex, Opex, ARPU, and Subscribers report, which features analysis on how current economic conditions are impacting telecommunications markets -- by region and equipment segment.

"Global telecom service provider capital expenditures hit a plateau in 2008, marking the end of a 5-year investment cycle and the beginning of a 3-year disinvestment cycle, albeit a less dramatic one than what followed the great telecom crash of 2000," predicts Stephane Teral, principal analyst at Infonetics.

Capex will bottom down in 2010 and a new investment cycle will start in 2011, driven by 3G rollouts in India and Central and Latin America, the start of 3G rollouts in Africa, and a ramp-up in LTE deployments in Australia, Brazil, Western Europe, Japan, and North America.

Highlights of the Infonetics market study include:

- Worldwide, service providers spent $305 billion in 2008 on capital expenditure projects, such as network infrastructure upgrades.

- Global capex is forecast to decline at most 6 percent in 2009, mainly due to a significant capex shakeout in the Middle East and Africa, a weakening U.S. dollar, expected declines in the Brazilian real and Mexican peso, and delays in U.S. broadband stimulus funding.

- Infonetics anticipates a year-end bump up in capex, which could bring the overall capex decline in 2009 to less than 6 percent.

- Optical network hardware is a bright spot in today's tightened capex environment, with decent single-digit percent spending growth expected in 2009, despite currency devaluations.

- Mainly due to currency effects, worldwide service provider revenue is forecast to decline only very slightly in 2009, to $1.67 trillion, driven by mobile communication services, as consumers continue to hold on to their mobile services during tough economic times.

- Mobile infrastructure will continue to dominate total global telecom and datacom spending, followed by voice equipment.

- The world's 10 largest service providers (ranked in order by 2008 revenue) are AT&T, NTT, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Vodafone, China Mobile, Telefonica, BT, and Sprint.

Popular posts from this blog

AI Investment Drives Semiconductor Demand

The global semiconductor industry is experiencing a historic acceleration driven by surging investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and computing power. According to the latest IDC worldwide market study, 2025 marks a defining year in which AI's pervasive impact reconfigures industry economics and propels record growth across the compute segment of the semiconductor market. Semiconductor Market Development IDC’s latest data reveals an insightful projection: The compute segment of the semiconductor market is on track to grow 36 percent in 2025, reaching $349 billion. This segment, which encompasses logic chips powering CPUs, GPUs, and AI accelerators, will sustain a robust 12 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2030. These numbers underscore not only current momentum but a structural shift driven by large-scale adoption of AI workloads spanning cloud, edge, and on-premises deployment models. The scale of investment is unprecedented. As organizations ...