- Telco spending on network technology dipped by 11% year on year in 2024, according to research firm Dell’Oro Group
- The only sector that didn’t shrink was fixed broadband equipment
- Don’t expect a recovery – overall, telco spending on network gear is expected to be flat this year, notes the Dell’Oro team
- Huawei is still the biggest vendor (even excluding China)
Network equipment vendors hoping to see an uptick in telco spending in 2025 might need to think again, according to the analyst team at Dell’Oro Group, which has reported an 11% year-on-year dip in worldwide telecom equipment revenues in 2024 and expects the value of the market to be flat in 2025.
The Dell’Oro team tracks telco spending in six telecom networking technology categories – broadband access, microwave transport, optical transport, mobile core network (MCN), radio access network (RAN), and service provider (SP) router and switch – and, according to its calculations based on the financial reports of the main vendors, the value of telco investments dipped in all but one of those categories last year, with the year-on-year decline “driven by multiple factors, including excess inventory, challenging macro environment, and difficult 5G comparisons”.
