An obvious storyline since March 2020 has been “impact of Covid-19 on X.” The problem with that story is that it might not be accurate. Looking at telecom service provider and infrastructure revenue growth trends, for example, and knowing nothing else, one would not necessarily conclude that anything unusual had happened.
The reason is simply that, between 2019 and 2020, revenue growth already had been slipping.
And that trend preexisted 2019. Looking only at telecom service providers in Western Europe between 2008 and 2014, revenue has dipped since about 2011. Covid-19 had nothing to do with those trends.
Similar trends are seen elsewhere, showing low telecom service provider revenue growth rates. STL Partners believes global service provider revenue growth will average less than one percent per year through 2022, for example.
The point is that we might attribute too much influence to Covid-19 as a driver of near term trends. The long term influence might be even less meaningful, though that is not the conventional wisdom.
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