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Worldwide spending on Telecom Services and Pay TV Services reached $1,551 billion in 2025, expanding by 2.0% year-over-year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Telecom Services Tracker. IDC expects that the worldwide spending on Telecom and Pay TV services will increase by 1.8% next year and reach a total of $1,580 billion.
2025 marked another year of slow but steady growth for the global telecom services market, with positive momentum recorded across all major regions — EMEA, Americas, and Asia Pacific. EMEA delivered the strongest regional performance, as regulatory frameworks permitting CPI-linked tariff adjustments allowed telecom operators to translate inflationary pressures into sustainable revenue growth. In Asia Pacific, robust expansion in India provided a bright spot, but was insufficient to offset the headwinds posed by a contracting Chinese market and a largely stagnant Japanese one, making the region the least dynamic of the three. The Americas presented a mixed but broadly constructive picture, with Latin America registering healthy growth, the United States returning to a positive growth trajectory, and Canada remaining largely flat.
“Taken together, 2025 reinforced the global telecom services market’s characteristic resilience — demonstrating an ability to sustain incremental growth even in an environment shaped by macroeconomic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and uneven regional dynamics,” says Kresimir Alic, research director, Worldwide Telecom Services at IDC.
The continuing conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East are expected to sustain elevated oil prices, driving up energy costs for telecom operators and compressing margins across the forecast period. Persistent inflationary pressures stemming from these conflicts will likely increase the cost of network hardware and labor, prompting operators to delay or scale back infrastructure investment plans. Slower global economic growth, as projected by leading international institutions, is anticipated to constrain enterprise and consumer telecom spending, particularly in markets most exposed to geopolitical risk. Still, significant market oscillations are not anticipated, as telecom services have become an indispensable element of modern life for both consumers and enterprises — rendering demand relatively inelastic even in periods of economic stress. The primary catalyst for a mid-term growth recovery will be stabilization of geopolitical conditions and a normalization of energy markets, both of which remain subject to considerable uncertainty.
Additional growth will be driven by accelerating deployment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations, whose connectivity services are anticipated to meaningfully reshape the global telecom services market by extending broadband access to underserved regions and introducing new competitive dynamics across the value chain. Direct-to-Device (D2D) services are forecast to emerge as a particularly disruptive capability, enabling direct satellite-to-handset connectivity that will compel mobile network operators to adopt hybrid terrestrial-satellite architectures, while creating significant growth opportunities for both satellite infrastructure owners and end-user equipment manufacturers. As the LEO ecosystem matures, satellite broadband is anticipated to transition from a niche offering to a mainstream component of the global connectivity landscape, accounting for a materially larger share of total telecom services revenue by the end of the decade. IDC’s current research scope covers LEO broadband services; additional satellite orbital regimes and service categories will be incorporated in future research cycles.
