Telecommunications

Telecommunications covers the carriers and communications services that connect everything — wired broadband, wireless and mobile, satellite, enterprise telecom, and the cloud-communications layer (VoIP/UCaaS and CPaaS). It is a massive, mature, capital-intensive industry dominated by the carrier giants (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Comcast, Charter); the U.S. wired and wireless carrier market alone exceeded $575 billion in 2017 (the Census withheld 2022 carrier receipts for confidentiality).

The industry is defined by the maturity and saturation of core connectivity, intense competition (wireless price wars and cable's entry into wireless via MVNO), convergence (fixed-mobile and cable-wireless bundling), and the migration of communications to the cloud (UCaaS and CPaaS disrupting traditional telecom). Carrier consolidation is largely complete (T-Mobile/Sprint), and the physical infrastructure — towers and fiber — is profiled under Telecommunications Infrastructure.