Despite the economic crisis, telecom service providers reduced their capital expenditures by only 5.9% worldwide in 2009, according to a new report from Infonetics Research. Two reasons are cited for the relatively modest decline: "service providers are operating with clean balance sheets, having learned that lesson from the great telecom crash, and the demand for broadband today is very real indeed." Infonetics expects that telco CAPEX will bottom-out this year before returning to an upgrade cycle in 2011.
Some other highlights of the report:
- Worldwide, service providers spent US$295 billion in 2009 on telecom and non-telecom capital expenditure projects, 5.9% less than they spent in 2008
- Carriers reduced investment in network infrastructure by 8% in 2009, with the deepest cuts in IP voice infrastructure, optical network equipment, video infrastructure, and IP routers
- Mobile infrastructure spending continues to make up the largest portion of all network infrastructure investments made by service providers, making up about 19%
- Worldwide, service providers took in US$1.65 trillion in revenue in 2009, a decrease of 4.2% from 2008
- Carrier revenue is expected to resume growth in 2010
- The world's 10 largest service providers (ranked in order by 2009 revenue in US dollars) are AT&T, NTT, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile, France Télécom, Vodafone, Telefónica, KDDI, and Comcast.
Infonetics' capex report tracks revenue, capex, capex-to-revenue ratios, opex, ARPU, subscribers, and access lines of 184 public and semi-private/government-owned service providers on a monthly and biannual basis. The report includes past, current, and forecast capex and revenue data through 2014 and equipment forecasts through 2010, market drivers, analysis, service provider demographics, and customizable pivot tables to analyze data by service provider, service provider type, and equipment category.
http://www.infonetics.com
