5G will support growth in the deployment and professional services markets, while slowing the decline of maintenance spend due to decommissioning and NFV/SDN

HAMPTON, N.H. (May 31, 2018) — According to Technology Business Research, Inc.’s (TBR) Telecom Infrastructure Services North America Market Forecast 2017-2022, the North America telecom infrastructure services (TIS) market will grow through the forecast period for three key reasons: Tax reform will stimulate capex investment; digital transformation initiatives will drive spend; and 5G investment will be pulled forward and accelerated by the big four operators in the U.S. to obtain or retain a competitive advantage. Spend pertaining to these overarching trends will be partly offset by cost savings from legacy infrastructure decommissioning, cloud, and NFV/SDN as well as synergies that are realized from M&A. TBR estimates the market will grow at a CAGR of 0.6% from 2017 to 2022.

“The big four operators in the U.S. intend to commercially deploy 5G as soon as late 2018, with deployments set to ramp up in 2019 and through the remainder of the forecast period,” said TBR Telecom Senior Analyst Michael Soper. “5G requires significant investments in fiber and upgrades in the network backbone and access layer, all of which will drive spend on TIS. 5G will slow the pace of decline in the maintenance market in the later years of the forecast period, but will not return the maintenance market to growth due to the aforementioned decommissioning and NFV/SDN.”

Vendors largely showed growth in North America in 2017. Although vendors with hardware exposure had flat or declining TIS revenue, suppliers grew sales if they had services and software portfolios aligned to operator transformation needs. Ericsson’s revenue declined predominantly due to the rescoped Sprint managed services contract. Cloud service provider spend remains robust in the U.S., helping Accenture and Nokia post growth in the region despite ongoing weak spend by telecom operators. Other vendors, particularly Juniper, are also obtaining a greater portion of TIS revenue from cloud service providers. Looking toward 2018 and beyond, IT services firms and software-centric companies, particularly Accenture, Amdocs, Tech Mahindra and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), are best positioned to help operators capitalize on the digital economy.

TBR’s Telecom Infrastructure Services North America Market Forecast provides annual analysis and forecasting of the deployment, maintenance, professional services and managed services markets for network and IT suppliers.