March 3rd. 2010, Newton MA. USA Tariff and Revenue Strategy(TRS) service looks at the financial outlook for service providers in 2010 and 2011. Although growth will be slow, TRS expects telecommunications to outpace the economy.
The glass is definitely ‘half-full’.
Real US growth is beginning to come from the manufacturing sector. US Federal Reserve has announced that January 2010 was the 7
th. consecutive month of US manufacturing growth.
Output of business equipment rose 0.9 percent in January, and information processing equipment increased 1.7 percent. In UK today’s strong service sector report is stimulating talk of positive first quarter GDP growth; and the February US numbers show stronger than expected service sector growth and continued manufacturing expansion.
For the telecommunications sector in 2010 the
substitution of telecommunications for travel and of messaging and email for business transactions should continue to increase penetration as a percent of overall industry activity. Because telecommunications increases labor productivity it will continue to outpace the slow economic recovery, even if there is little job growth.
Slowing rate of job losses has not been great news – though this is exactly
how things look just before the economy turns up . Think ‘sine wave’ and ‘positive first derivative’.
The slow recovery is
not slow enough however, to totally depress Communications Investment. Capital expenditures (CAPEX) for telecommunications equipment and network deployment are expected to recover significantly in 2010, even if the level may not get back above that of 2008.
Even as operators are laying off thousands of employees to improve competitive efficiency, they are optimistic enough to announce significant 2010 CAPEX for broadband telecom (fixed and mobile) over the next 18 months. These operators expect
next generation IP based infrastructure to leverage the hardware volume of the information industry and lower their overall cost of operations. BTW: It is hard to quantify the exact impact of these savings on operator financials – but TRS is working on it.
In 2010 and 2011 we expect that
mobile broadband and IP based infrastructure will have the performance to begin to fill the ‘Broadband Gap’. Mobile Broadband at 2- 20 MBps may actually be the cheaper, better way to deploy broadband services in rural and low density areas around the world.
This infrastructure deployment will itself stimulate further economic growth.
As April comes and the weather improves the
glass may very slowly start getting fuller.
Sue Rudd - srudd@strategyanalytics.com