Telecom CapEx Stayed Flat
Dell’Oro reports that global telecom capital expenditure was flat in 2025 even as equipment revenue rose modestly, underlining that not every infrastructure vertical is in a broad expansion phase. That uneven demand suggests sellers should segment pipelines by buyer archetype—hyperscaler, telecom, OEM, enterprise—since approval paths and spending tempos differ. Treating all segments as equally expansionary risks misallocated sales effort and forecast error. (thefastmode.com)
The telecom industry spent 2025 like a sector catching its breath. Dell’Oro says global telecom capital expenditure was flat in nominal dollars, based on about 50 service providers that account for roughly 80 percent of worldwide spending. Equipment revenue still rose 4 percent. That sounds like growth until you notice where the money did not move: the carriers themselves. (prnewswire.com) That gap matters because telecom capex is the old anchor of network spending. When operators loosen budgets, the whole supply chain usually feels it. In 2025, that pattern weakened. Dell’Oro says the relationship between operator capex and equipment revenue stayed broadly stable across its tracked segments, but the extra lift came from outside the classic carrier cycle. Cloud providers accounted for around half of the equipment revenue growth. The market was not roaring back. It was being pulled unevenly by a different class of buyer. (prnewswire.com) The equipment rebound had its own quirks. Dell’Oro’s preliminary numbers for the first half of 2025 showed aggregate revenue up 4 percent across broadband access, microwave and optical transport, mobile core, radio access networks, and service provider routing and switching. The gains were helped by easier comparisons with a weak 2024, inventories settling down, and favorable currency moves. Outside China, revenue grew 8 percent in the first half. Optical transport, mobile core, and routing led the recovery. (delloro.com) None of that changed the bigger fact that the 5G buildout peak has passed. Dell’Oro had already been signaling in September 2025 that capex was stabilizing rather than surging, after two years of cuts. Operators were shifting away from blanket coverage builds and toward capacity, quality, automation, and energy performance. That is a very different spending profile. It favors targeted upgrades over broad construction. It also means vendors cannot assume that a healthier equipment market translates into a broad carrier buying wave. (prnewswire.com) The next step in the story is even less forgiving. Dell’Oro now projects worldwide telecom capex will decline 2 percent in 2026 and then grow at just a 1 percent compound annual rate through 2030. Carrier revenue is expected to rise modestly, around 2 percent CAGR, which means capital intensity keeps drifting down from the 5G era. Dell’Oro expects the capex-to-revenue ratio to approach 14 percent by 2029, while wireless capital intensity falls to about 11 percent, seven points below the 5G peak. (prnewswire.com) That is why “infrastructure” is now too blunt a category to be useful. Hyperscalers, telecom operators, OEMs, and enterprises are all buying network gear, but they do not buy on the same clock. A cloud company can step on the gas because AI demand is immediate. A telecom operator can believe in the same long-term traffic story and still freeze near-term spending because returns are harder to see. Dell’Oro’s own language captures the split: long-term optimism, near-term caution. (prnewswire.com) For sellers, the risk is not missing a boom. It is pretending there is one. If a forecast treats hyperscaler demand as proof that telecom is expanding again, sales teams get pointed at the wrong accounts and managers mistake one buyer’s urgency for a market-wide turn. In 2025, the strongest signal was not the 4 percent rise in equipment revenue. It was the flat line underneath it. (prnewswire.com)
