Infonetics: Telecom capex to $311B in 2011, revenues to $1.86T

Global telecom carrier capital expenditures are expected to come in 6 percent higher in 2011 than in 2010, as carriers continue to upgrade their wireless spend. Additionally, researchers forecast that telecom service provider revenue will grow 7.6 percent this year, to $1.86 trillion.

Research firm Infonetics Research, in its latest "Service Provider Capex, Opex, ARPU, and Subscribers" report, said that, aside from 2009, telecom service provider revenue has shown year-over-year growth. It projected that trend to continue through 2015.

Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at Infonetics, said the 2011 growth was in large part a result of AT&T's (NYSE: T), ramping LTE deployments, HSPA+ upgrades, and investments in Wi-Fi hotspots for traffic offload. He said that capex push offsets Verizon Wireless' slowing mobile spending since their LTE rollout peaked earlier this year.

Even the turmoil in European economies hasn't significantly slowed telecom spending.

"We maintain our view that the sovereign debt crisis that is paralyzing Europe continues to have little impact on our telecom capex forecast," Téral said. "As long as credit remains available to telecoms at a fair price, the ongoing sovereign debt crisis should have little impact on telecommunications equipment spending. Investment plans across world regions suggest mobile broadband and FTTx is the name of the game going forward."

Among Infonetics' findings:

• Service provider spending on every type of next-gen telecom equipment except TDM voice is up in 2011;
• WiMAX equipment (up 27.5 percent) and video infrastructure (up 20.7 percent) are the fastest-growing investment areas among telecom carriers in 2011;
• APAC will continue to be the largest telecom carrier capex region through 2015; and,
• Wireless pure-play operators will grow to account for nearly one-third of all telecom carrier capex by 2015

For more:
- see this release

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