Once upon a time telecom hardware was relied upon to bring home the bacon for most communications technology companies. Computers were large and expensive machines that were available to only a select population, and mass communication still relied primarily on telephone lines. These days, however, the lay of the land has changed dramatically due to advances in technology and a switch in marketing plans to place more emphasis on consumable goods and services over the original hardware.
Any strong telecommunications company needs to put a great deal more emphasis on services than on telecom hardware in order to stay competitive these days. The rising prominence of the internet has resulted in the emergence of cloud computing as a viable organizing model for the modern corporation; and, at the same time, a lack of financing and lack of desire to make risky purchases has toned down the equipment market. As a result most telecom equipment manufacturers are switching over to hybrid business models that make their profit by both providing the initial hardware to their customers, and charging monthly service rates or usage rates to utilize the cables and lines.
The implications of this switch in emphasis are hard to chart without many years of experience in the industry, but we are likely to see a wealth of interesting and inventive new services being offered to compete in the new economy concurrently with a significant amount of new technology being introduced onto the market to release some of the strain on global communication networks. By the time the dust settles the modern telecom company will be radically different than anything we have known before.