The post-bubble opportunities seem to lie in exploiting three main trends. The most visible growth area is the continuing rise of mobile phones, which have overtaken fixed-line phones to become the most widespread communications devices on earth. Their number is expected to rise from 1.3 billion today to 2 billion by 2007, and they are being increasingly used to do much more than make phone calls, providing new opportunities for wireless operators and equipment makers.
The second trend is the growth of high-speed or “broadband” internet access, which is booming in many parts of the world. This offers a valuable new market for fixed-line operators, once they have supercharged their existing telephone networks to make them broadband-capable.
A third promising area is in the corporate-telecoms market. As large firms look for ways to cut costs and move operations overseas, many are adopting new internet-based technologies that can interconnect regional offices cheaply and securely and allow voice and data to flow over the same network. Many operators are now overhauling and simplifying their tangled networks to ensure they can implement such “next-generation services” quickly and efficiently.