Citing results from their new, 300-plus page report covering almost every facet of the telecommunications industry, executives of the Telecommunications Industry Association said that while the market is slowing down and telecommunications spending may seem to be floundering, the industry is still hot enough to generate double-digit growth throughout the next four years.
“We are at a turning point in this industry,” said Mary Bradshaw, TIA’s vice president and the report’s project manager, during a conference call. “We will see moderate growth, but we will see growth.”
According the 2001 MultiMedia Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast, which was released last week, spending on the overall telecommunications market reached about $1.8 trillion worldwide last year, and will continue to expand by 14.7 percent on a compound annual basis to reach close to $3.1 trillion in 2004.
The authors of the report acknowledge that the financial community is now more closely scrutinizing telecommunications investments, which may make infrastructure investments harder to come by. However, a variety of factors-including bandwidth and application service providers-will continue to drive the industry to grow and expand.
Growth in the supply of bandwidth led to a drop in the price of bandwidth, which will push network service providers to bundle applications to stimulate usage, the report finds. This, in turn, will lead to further bandwidth investments.
