"The total worldwide telecom market grew by 3.2 percent during 2012, and IDC (News - Alert) is forecasting growth of 3.4 percent during the 2013 time frame, with the market settling into a steady growth rate of about 3.2 percent during the forecast time frame," according to Courtney Munroe, GVP, Worldwide Telecommunications, Mobility, and Network Infrastructure, IDC. But those service provider revenues will be unevenly distributed.

What is not so clear from those global statistics is the actual pattern of growth and decline regionally. Europe provides an example.

The European telecom service market decreased for the third year in a row in 2011, by 1.5 percent, the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association reports. In the third quarter of 2012, European carrier revenue contracted, though growing in other regions such as China, the United States, India and South America.

Even in the United Kingdom and Germany, the markets with the brightest future, STL Partners forecasts a respective 19 percent and 20 percent revenue decline in mobile core services (voice, messaging and data) revenues by 2020.

Revenue in the French market will decline 34 percent by 2020. In Italy, revenue will drop 47 percent and in Spain revenue will drop 61 percent by 2020.

Overall, STL Partners anticipates a reduction of 36 percent or €30 billion in core mobile service revenues by 2020, a loss of about €50 billion for Europe as a whole.

Moreover, the decline in European fixed telephony revenues is accelerating (-8.3 percent in 2011 and –31 percent over the last five years), driven in part by a negative five percent growth of fixed lines in service, according to ETNO.

Since 2005, fixed line subscribership is down 22 percent.  The bad news is that mobile revenues, long the driver of industry growth, also are declining (-0.6 percent), ETNO says.

Mobile voice revenues were down 4.7 percent in 2011 (–13.2 percent over the past three years), a decline driven by significant drops in some large countries: Spain (-8.3 percent),

France (-8.2 percent) and Germany (-7.1 percent).

Fixed network broadband revenue is the bright spot though, as revenues were up 6.5 percent in 2011. Yet, mobile services remain the bulk of telcos revenues, accounting for 52 percent of the total market (142.7 billion EUR in 2011).

Europe's share of the global telecoms market has been declining regularly over recent years, from 31 percent  in 2005 to just over 25 percent in 2011 as the gap between global growth (+3.2 percent in 2011) and growth in Europe widens.