Report sees telecom sector growth outpacing GDP growth

Infonetics Research has released excerpts from its December 2012 Fundamental Telecom and Datacom Market Drivers report, which analyzes global and regional market trends and conditions.

“As we’re ending 2012, Europe’s crisis remains uncontained and is now spreading to Germany," says Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research. "The potential of shaking business confidence everywhere in the world has risen to new heights, and the IMF lowered its growth forecast and is warning of recession risks due to downward revision of global GDP, which now stands at 3.3%."

According to Infonetics, globally, mobile service revenue is the main growth engine in the overall telecom/datacom market, up 4.3% year-over-year in the first half of 2012. The firm says that user mobility, specifically "BYOD anywhere", is putting pressure on carriers to move to a single network for fixed and mobile access, internet traffic, and private/premium services. The report also finds that data traffic growth is outstripping transport equipment costs, with traffic climbing 29% annually, while equipment costs are falling 10%. Infonetics also determines that while software-defined networks (SDNs) are on service providers’ minds, it is a longer-term challenge to find implementations of hybrid SDN and non-SDN in live networks.

"Economic readings are worrisome everywhere but the U.S., but so far the impact on global telecom and enterprise remains tame, and we’re forecasting capex to grow nearly 4% in 2012 over 2011,” estimates Téral. “With the announcement of AT&T’s and Deutsche Telekom’s multi-billion dollar investment plans, next year’s capex outlay looks brighter.” The report also reveals that the phase-out of stimulus monies and pressure on government budgets is decreasing public sector spending and taking a bite out of overall enterprise growth.

The analysis adds that, with security top of mind due to unprecedented threats and the growing BYOD trend, businesses are looking to integrate security into everything from smartphones to routers and switches, and are evaluating data center security appliances, cloud security services, and security for virtualized environments and public and private clouds.

More information about the report is available here.