Telecoms Capex Worldwide: Trends and Forecasts 2020-2032

"The useful economic life of telecoms assets is lengthening, and for that reason capex is slowing."

Telecoms capex has been in decline since 2022, but whether there will be a rebound remains an open question.

This report provides granular capex forecasts for infrastructure, hardware and software by asset type and source for 8 global regions and 13 individual countries, plus the EU.

It provides historical data from 2020 and forecasts to 2032 for capex by:

• source: operators, infracos, content and application providers (CAPs) and enterprises
• network asset type: wireline access, wireless access, wireless x-haul and packet core, transport networks, operator data-centre and cloud stack spend and capitalised software
• category: infrastructure and technology
• new versus legacy network
• growth versus maintenance.

The report also provides an explanation of spending trends for the telecoms industry globally and by region.

Questions answered in this report

• What do we expect the trends in telecoms capex to be between now and 2032, and what are the drivers for investment?
• How do AI traffic, AI infrastructure requirements and AI capabilities impact spending?
• For which technologies or architectures will operator spending grow? When will 6G be a meaningful part of capex?
• How much capex will there be from non-traditional players, wholesale providers and cloud or enterprise co-investors?