Telecom carrier Capex (capital spending) is expected to increase 4 percent to reach $354 billion in 2014, said Infonetics Research.
The bulk of the telecom investment will be coming from China’s massive LTE rollouts led by China Mobile and China Telecom and from Deutsche Telekom’s and Vodafone’s major network upgrades across Europe.
Stephane Teral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research, said: “As the fourth year of this new investment cycle continues, we’re forecasting worldwide telecom Capex to rise 4 percent and hit $354 billion by the end of 2014.”
In 2013, telecom carrier Capex grew 6.7 percent to $340 billion, after a significant forex adjustment that erased billions of operator revenue and Capex when converted to the U.S. dollar.
However, this does not reflect in revenue of top telecom network vendors such as Ericsson, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, etc. In fact, all the top network vendors are in the process of restructuring their exercise to identify new revenue streams and cut down costs.
Infonetics Research said the Japanese yen dropped more than 30 percent against the U.S. dollar, the Indian rupee dropped 10 percent, and the Brazilian real continues to drop.
Expenditures for every type of equipment except TDM voice, video infrastructure, and CPE grew on a year-over-year basis in 2013, with IP voice rising 32 percent powered by IMS-based LTE rollouts and VoLTE preparations
Meanwhile, telecom services grew 1.4 percent in 2013 to $1.97 trillion, dragged by EMEA, said Infonetics Research.
Global telecom services revenue will grow at 1.7 percent CAGR from 2013 to 2018, the report noted. Saturation and competition intensify in every market of the globe will be the primary reasons for the slow growth in telecom service revenue.
EMEA, the world’s #2 telecom revenue contributor, is expected to continue losing ground to frontrunner Asia Pacific through 2018, while North America holds steady and Latin America stays flat.
TelecomLead News Team
