Category Scan: Telecom Services Industry to Bounce Back in 2021 After Slowdown

The telecom services and enterprise networks market is expected to recover in 2021 with a growth rate of 1-1.5 percent, as per Beroe Inc.

Due to the pandemic – among other reasons – the global telecom market size contracted from $44.1 billion to $43 billion. This represents a contraction of 2.5 percent, primarily in the roaming, prepaid, and business services industries. However, growing demand will lead to the recovery of the telecom services industry, with a forecast telecom services market size of $43.43 billion at the end of the 2020-21 financial year. The telecom services market will take some further time to recover its pre-pandemic size.

Among fixed-line services, key trends revolve around the use of SIP Trunking. The effective design of SIP trunking minutes will be crucial to improving usage rates for fixed-line services. Additionally, improved session costs and diversification of the network through PRIs will be key to improving returns.

The latest buzzword in the telecom market has been 5G technology. This is widely recognized as the immediate future of communication, which is driven primarily by two applications. The first, mobile broadband, is witnessing an upsurge in the shift of both businesses and individuals toward cloud-based services. Additionally, regular services such as videos, conference calling, and conferencing have constantly been transitioning to higher-quality versions that require greater bandwidth. Secondly, the Internet of Things has massive machine-type communications and mission-critical applications driving its growth. Current 4G networks cannot handle the kind of large scale deployment of massive machine-type communications that 5G networks can. For mission-critical applications, the high reliability and low latency required can only be delivered through 5G networks.

With the usage of Huawei equipment being restricted worldwide, major telecom operators of the telecom services market have been transitioning from Huawei. Before the restriction came into effect, Huawei was the world’s largest telecom network that controlled 30 percent market share of global telecom. Due to the aforementioned restriction, the pace of China’s 5G expansion has dropped significantly. The major advantage of these restrictions could be availed by Nokia, Samsung, and Ericsson.

Among the major effects of the pandemic has been an increase in mobile devices within the enterprise network. This has led to an acceleration in the deployment of hybrid WAN and SD-WAN, helping support multiple endpoints connected through different technologies within one network, and further reducing the cost of enterprise-level WAN by 33-35 percent.

The deployment of unified communications is driven by artificial intelligence, mobility, cloud computing, and enterprise messaging. Among these, cloud-based unified communications are expected to control a 25 percent share. The use of artificial intelligence will benefit the telecom services market as a whole, especially in the unified communications field.

Key Findings

• The demand for bandwidth has been rising steeply, but telecom operators are getting stiff competition from OTT services.
• Improved session costs, better rates for usage, and diversification through PRIs could be key to better returns from fixed-line services.
• Mobile broadband, with an upward trend driven by emerging high bandwidth applications, and the Internet of Things, are the two key functions leading trends in 5G deployment.
• Major service providers have been transitioning away from Huawei, which could lead to a windfall for competitors such as Samsung, Ericsson, and Nokia.
• With the pandemic leading to an increase in the number of devices within the enterprise network, the deployment of Hybrid WAN and SD-WAN will be accelerated.
• The unified communications market is being led by applications in artificial intelligence, mobility, cloud computing, and enterprise messaging.