Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

About Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Chris Antlitz is a principal analyst in TBR’s Telecom Practice. Chris oversees and contributes to the Telecom Practice’s syndicated research portfolio and custom project work. Chris leverages over 15 years of analytical experience to lead the Telecom Practice’s research agenda as well as provide critical insight and analysis to syndicated and project work.
Chris covers the global telecom vendor and operator ecosystem and all major trends in the space including, but not limited to, developments in NFV, SDN, edge computing, digital transformation, IoT, private cellular networks and 5G. He also covers the hyperscaler market, particularly the pursuits of the Big Nine hyperscaler companies (i.e., Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Rakuten, Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent) in the digital space.
Additional focuses for Chris include the supply and demand of ICT hardware, software and services as well as spending trends, demand shifts and relationships in the vendor-operator ecosystem. He plays an integral role in the creation of TBR’s telecom-related market landscapes, market forecasts and benchmarks, and he presents key findings from reports and thought leadership in TBR webinars.

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Entries by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Webscales are simultaneously moving into multiple trillion-dollar industries, including telecom

08.17.21/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Webscales need to enter and disrupt trillion-dollar industries to maintain growth trajectories and sustain stock valuations Transportation (e.g., connected vehicles), logistics, financial services, healthcare, telecom and other sectors each represent at least a trillion dollars in economic value globally, and webscales are targeting each of these industries for disruption. Webscales need to rapidly scale their […]

PCN vendors poised for rapid growth as 5G ecosystem is built out

05.11.21/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

5G represented a small portion of the overall PCN market in 2020, but is poised to rapidly scale in coming years According to TBR’s estimates, 5G represented 8%, on average, of benchmarked companies’ private cellular network (PCN) revenue in 2020, with the rest being LTE. LTE remains the de facto technology for PCN, thanks to […]

Leading enterprises are planning massive investments in DT; 5G implicated in many cases

01.22.21/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Leading enterprises intend to spend big on digital transformation, which in many cases implicates 5G Leading companies in their respective verticals, such as Amazon, Walmart, Walgreens, Ford and Deere & Co., are preparing to make relatively large investments in digital transformation (DT) over the next few years as they adjust to the post-pandemic new normal, […]

COVID-19 pandemic forces telecom industry to go all in on digital transformation

12.03.20/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

CSPs face brave new world; government stimulate market The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to persist through at least 2021 as vaccines and other virus mitigation efforts take time to make their way through societies globally. In the meantime, the global economy remains in a state of suspended animation following unprecedented injections of fiscal and monetary […]

Webscales will ultimately become more like competitors than partners to operators to capitalize on 5G-era opportunities

11.23.20/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Webscales are not the telco’s friend The Big Nine have various initiatives underway that will disrupt aspects of the telecom business model and pose a direct threat to operators’ existing connectivity businesses and their ability to capitalize on new value created from 5G. Though webscales are posturing like they want to partner with telcos on […]

NFV and SDN are transformational technologies, and even leading CSPs are in the early stages of evolving

11.12.20/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Despite market and complexity challenges, CSP spend on NFV/SDN will grow at a TBR-projected 32.4% CAGR from 2019 to 2024 to nearly $147B NFV/SDN spend will increase at a CAGR of 32.4% to $146.9 billion between 2019 and 2024, compared to nearly flat overall communication service provider (CSP) spend (capex plus external opex) for the […]

Enterprise interest in 5G has greatly increased since the pandemic began, pulling forward adoption timelines

11.11.20/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Global 2000 companies and governments will drive the vast majority of spend on private 5G infrastructure Global 2000-sized companies and governments have the scale, financial resources and technical acumen to handle the complexity of 5G and realize its full benefits. TBR estimates over 90% of private 5G investment will stem from these entities through mid-decade, […]

COVID-19 fallout unlocks unique opportunities for the telecom industry to build out edge infrastructure

10.07.20/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

vRAN will become a major driver of edge compute scale-outs Communication service providers (CSPs) that are driving forward with virtualized radio access network (vRAN), most notably Rakuten and Dish, will build many thousands of edge sites over the next few years to support their vRAN topologies. These edge sites will need to be located within […]

Unprecedented government support will help CSPs deploy 5G more quickly and broadly than originally anticipated

07.27.20/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

CSP spend on 5G infrastructure will scale faster and peak higher than originally anticipated due to the vast amount of support by governments in a range of countries, including but not limited to China, the U.S., the U.K., Japan, South Korea and Singapore. Due to this, typical historical deployment curves for cellular technologies will not […]

The Big Nine are trailblazing paths to economic value of the digital era; incumbent players need to determine their roles

06.25.20/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Big Nine aim to own the foundational, intelligent innovation platforms of the digital economy The Big Nine — Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU), Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Rakuten and Tencent — view 5G and distributed computing as innovation platforms on top of which […]