Global Spending on Telecom Services on the Rise
May 13, 2016
By Steve Anderson
Contributing Writer
The idea of going without a phone, or Internet access, for any length of time is a daunting proposition to some people, and with good reason. We're talking here, after all, about going without key communications services that keep us connected, allow us to work, and entertain us like never before. The sheer indispensable nature of telecom explains in part why spending on such is set to increase through 2019.
Just by 2018, a report from Statista notes, over $1.6 billion will be spent on telecom services worldwide, and a year later, that number will approach $1.7 billion. That's up substantially from even just 2014, where the planet spent $1.5 trillion on telecom spending. The numbers may not look like much, but when dealing with fractions of a billion, even a small hike is objectively huge.
Spending will likely be big all over, but the biggest source of spending is the Asia Pacific region. Set to by itself account for $550 billion in revenue alone, this is a market to watch. Naturally, perennial favorites North America and Europe will also give good account, but neither has the sheer population counts of the Asia-Pacific field. Wireless will account for the lion's share of spending, about 63 percent of the total, and will reach about $1.04 trillion in revenue by 2018. Fixed communications services will make up most of the rest, pulling in about 36 percent, or $606 billion in 2019.
Several firms will have a stake in this market, with the frontrunners including AT&T and Verizon in the United States, China Mobile in China, Deutsche Telekom (News - Alert) in Germany—and also somewhat in the United States under the brand T-Mobile—and Vodafone in Great Britain.
Communications services are commonly used every day, and are only gaining in importance the farther along we go. With new uses for these technologies coming into play daily thanks to things like cloud-based systems, software-as-a-service, the Internet of Things (IoT) and others, we'll be using a lot more communications services in our working lives. Then when we come home, we'll continue to use these services for online gaming, streaming video, and plenty more. That adds up to what could be a golden age ahead for telecom firms, who will be increasingly called upon to provide the necessary infrastructure for such systems.
Telecom services are increasingly valuable thanks to the growing number of use cases that call for such services. Big gains are likely ahead, and companies that plan ahead here will be best positioned to take advantage of this rising tide.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi