The global outbreak of COVID-19—and its associated economic impact—has amplified the role played by the international telecommunications industry and the bandwidth market that underpins it. The global bandwidth market has always been marked by change and uncertainty, and the current crisis is just an extreme example of this.
Headquartered in Amsterdam, United Group is a multiplay telecom and media provider that's developed a large footprint across southeast Europe. Last month, the company secured the acquisition of Tele2 Croatia from Sweden’s Tele2 Group.
The deal is valued at EUR220 million—easily one of United Group’s most notable takeovers.
We founded the WAN Summit with the intention of creating a space where enterprise network managers and vendors could come together to discuss trends in corporate networking. While our summits cover everything the WAN touches, it’s no secret that one topic has been at the forefront of many attendees’ minds: SD-WAN.
Apr 23, 2020
Cellular Subscribers to Hit 9 Billion in 2026
The latest figures from TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Forecast Service show that there were 7.95 billion cellular subscriptions worldwide at the end of 2019, up from 6.97 billion five years earlier and 4.61 billion at the end of 2009.
Apr 21, 2020
WAN Pricing Mythbusters: Is MPLS Priced Like DIA?
In case you missed my previous post, we here at TeleGeography love busting telecom myths. But we haven’t turned our analytical tools toward common WAN pricing myths—until now!
In this second installment, I’m going to investigate whether MPLS IP VPN and dedicated internet access (DIA) prices have become one and the same.
Apr 17, 2020
WAN Service and Pricing Trends for 2020
The world of WAN services can seem like the Wild West to even the savviest of WAN managers. We try to bring some order to this world with our Cloud and WAN Infrastructure research service.
In the age of high-profile corporate data breaches (check out that top 10 list if you don’t want to sleep tonight), many WAN managers have security on their minds. Traditionally, enterprises treated their network security like a fortress, creating strong defenses at the perimeters of the network to defend the data and resources inside.
Unsurprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic is a recurring theme across the majority of industry headlines this month.
From reports on usage trends, to the new WFH plight of WAN managers, to Google changing its Chrome release plans to avoid any hiccups in service—coronavirus has permeated the industry from every corner.
You can peruse these stories below. And if you're looking for more updates on how the pandemic is impacting the telecom industry, there's lots more on our State of the Network page. We're curating the latest headlines, network status updates, and reports from service providers.
We have a years-long tradition of Mythbusting here at TeleGeography. But it occurred to me that we’ve never tackled any of the WAN pricing myths floating around out there. That’s why I decided to do a series addressing some of the things I hear from WAN-sourcing and WAN-selling professionals.
Let’s see if these WAN pricing myths stack up against the data.
First up: is it true that, particularly for traditional MPLS networks, local access can account for upwards of 50% of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of WAN components?
Apr 2, 2020
WAN Managers Mull Over Data Center Strategies
Like many of our readers, I’m currently working from home. And it’s likely that I will be for the foreseeable future.
Luckily, TeleGeography just completed its move from a local server that had been living in the IT closet of our DC office to Google’s G Suite solution. We can now access shared files using our at-home broadband connection and G Suite authentication. Despite the uncertainty of the current situation, we’re able to carry on (fairly) business-as-usual.
