Flat Global Telecom "As Far as the Eye Can See"

The people who write press releases quite often are not subject matter experts. If they were, wildly incorrect headlines such as “Worldwide Spending on Telecommunications Services Is Forecast to Reach $1.6 Billion in 2020, According to IDC” would not appear in press releases. Global telecom revenue is closer to $2 trillion per year, almost every year. Ignoring the typo, the larger point is how flat revenue is going to be, globally.

source: IDC

Somebody was not watching closely enough. Earlier IDC press releases had called for $1,647 Billion in 2020. That’s $1.645 trillion. 

IDC’s 2018 forecast called for revenue of, you guessed it, about $1.62 trillion. 

Global Regional Services 2018 Revenue and Year-on-Year Growth
Global Region	2018 Revenue ($B)	CAGR 2018-2023 (%)
Americas	616	0.0
Asia/Pacific	512	0.8
EMEA	487	0.9
Grand Total	1,615	0.5

source: IDC

The wider point, though, is that global telecom revenue--despite faster growth in some regions--has become a slow-growth business once again, as was the case in the monopoly era prior to about 1985.