In a competitive market, the lowest-cost competitor tends to win, all other things being equal. Nobody would question the notion that tier-one telcos tend to be the highest-cost providers in any market.

Also, as jobs tend to grow in industries that in turn are growing, jobs tend to contract in industries, or industry segments, where revenues are declining. Globally, revenues are growing in mobile, and declining or slowly growing in fixed network segments.

All of that should have some drop-dead simple implications. Investment will move from fixed to mobile networks, and so will jobs. So it is no surprise that the UNI Europa ICTS union now estimates that European carriers will probably cut their workforce by 30 percent by about 2018.

Within a decade, industry employment will be cut in half, the group also says. In large part, that is only an effort to benchmark against more efficient North American carriers. What other outcome should be expected?

U.S wireless revenue in 2012 of about $335 billion represents around 66 percent of communications revenues.  Fixed network voice revenue was about $132 billion, with an additional $38 billion in broadband access revenue and $6 billion in television revenue, for a total of about $176 billion in fixed network revenue.

Moreover, by some estimates, U.S. communications industry revenue will be essentially flat from 2009 to 2015.

It is a well-documented fact that wireless revenues as a percentage of total revenues has been climbing for a decade. The only issue has been the precise year of crossover, when wireless surpasses fixed network revenue.

The three biggest U.S. carriers – AT&T, Verizon Communications and Sprint Nextel (News - Alert) Corp. – have shrunk their work forces by almost 25 percent since 2007, Bloomberg says.

In Europe, where governments often discourage job cuts, many carriers sold assets and dividends instead of reducing the size of the workforce. Whether or not that is tenable is the issue.