The impact of the Great Recession beginning in 2008 is easy enough to describe. According to TeleGeography Research, revenue growth slipped from about seven percent annually to one percent in 2009, returning to about three percent globally in 2011. Global revenue after recession
The issue is whether the U.S. economy can avoid its own return to recession, and for how long. In principle, one has to assume that recessions will occur in the future as they have oscillated with expansions in the past. If we are now in an “expansion,” that means the next cycle will be a recession.
Though there is great uncertainty about the danger of a double-dip recession in the United States, the Economic Cycle Research Institute says the U.S. economy is either just beginning to dip, or is about to do so, says Lakshman Achuthan, the managing director of ECRI. “The critical news is there’s no turning back,” he says. “We are going to have a new recession.” U.S. Double Dip?
If that turns out to be correct, service providers probably will encounter revenue pressure much as was seen in the last recession. The issue will not be so much that “lines” or “accounts” are abandoned, as that users will consume less. So “line loss” will not be the issue so much as “average revenue per user.”
