Communication service providers (CSPs) in the Western European enterprise market have faced difficult market conditions for years, hit by a perfect storm of economic headwinds, spending rationalisation, technology migrations, competition, and regulatory pressure.

A new report from International Data Corporation (IDC), however, suggests there might be light at the end of the tunnel for the troubled sector.

The report shows that revenue declines for CSPs’ business wireline activities continued to level off in the fourth quarter of 2015. While this does not mean an end to the difficult market conditions for the telecoms sector, IDC does expect sustained improvement in the coming years.

“The rate of decline for connectivity markets, which remain at the heart of the CSP business, will decrease, and will eventually turn positive by 2019,” said Jan Hein Bakkers, senior research manager, IDC. “The perfect storm will subside, while enterprises will increasingly migrate to higher-capacity next-generation access networks to satisfy their ever-growing bandwidth requirements.

A focused approach to selected associated markets, such as cloud, IoT, security, and unified communications, will present CSPs with additional opportunities to speed up their recovery.”

The report, State of European Enterprise Communications, March 2016 (IDC #EMEA41157216, April 2016), examines the development of the market in recent quarters, analyses trends and communication service provider strategies, and ties these to IDC’s outlook for enterprise connectivity services in the coming years.

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