Who Needs to Know What?

It can be a humbling experience to realize how few people in any industry actually need to know the actual business dynamics that drive results in that industry. Even fewer need any serious knowledge of what drives outcomes in other industry segments than their own.

For example, multi-site enterprises are essential for providers of SD-WAN products and services, but irrelevant for internet service providers who only sell to consumers and businesses in local markets.

Likewise retail mobility revenues are mostly irrelevant (in a direct sense) for sellers of wide area network services. For channel partners, business customers matter, generally not consumers.

Hyperscalers do not need to bother with "local access." What matters is connectivity between data centers and points of presence. 

The point is that what drives the whole market can be quite different from what drives each submarket.

In today’s world, up to 85 percent (by some estimates) of total connectivity service provider revenues are generated by mobile services. In most markets, consumers provide up to 60 percent of revenue while business customers supply perhaps 40 percent of total revenue. 

Product	Revenue Percentage	Comments
Consumer Mobile Subscriptions	40%	Subscriptions are the key product. According to a 2022 report by the GSMA, mobile subscriptions generated 40% of global telecom revenue.
Business Mobile Subscriptions	20%	Subscriptions are the key product
Home Broadband	15%	Consumer internet access now is the core product for a fixed network
Voice Services	10%	Declining legacy service on both fixed and mobile networks
Mobile Internet Access	5%	Mobile internet access drives the next wave of mobile segment growth, once subscriptions saturate
Data Transport Services	5%	Data transport services including SD-WAN, MPLS, dedicated internet access are an important niche contributor

Looking only at business customer revenues, mobile services also are the biggest single revenue source, with local data access (internet access, private network access) being the second biggest contributor. 

Product	Revenue %
Wide Area Network Data Transport Services	15
Mobile Services	40
Fixed Network Voice Services	20
Local Network Access Services	25

None to little of that matters, in a functional sense, for suppliers of non-mobile services, ranging from home broadband (with the exception of mobile substitution) to SD-WAN or capacity services. 

The point is that very few people in the broader connectivity business actually care very much about top-line industry revenue trends, nor perhaps do they need to do so. CxOs, equity analysts and market analysts almost always need to have some knowledge of those trends.