Canadian Communications Services Forecast, 2024–2028

Canadian Communications Services Forecast, 2024–2028

This IDC study provides the five-year forecast for the Canadian communications services sector's revenue including consumer, business, and wholesale market segments for 2024–2028. This study also provides more detailed forecasts across service segments of wireless, internet access, video, data, and wireline voice, as well as detailing the key drivers and inhibitors supporting those forecasts.This forecast is based on annual reports from Canadian communications service providers, including actual subscribers, revenue, and growth rates in the previous calendar years. In addition, this forecast is based on closely following the competitive, customer, and technological dynamics and market trends of the Canadian communications services market; key metrics such as growth rates, penetration rates, and average spend per subscriber; key governmental and regulatory policies and decisions; as well as the analysis of relevant data from sources including, but not limited to, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Statistics Canada, and the Bank of Canada (BoC). Revenue for 2023 used in this document is based on actual 2023 year-end results as derived from company reports and IDC Canada's 2024 Telecom Market Model and is not based on our previous forecast, Canadian Communications Services Forecast, 2023–2027 (IDC #CA50195723, June 2023)."Though Canada is seeing the highest population growth it has seen since 1957, which helps growth in revenue, the communications industry is being impacted by inflation, high interest rates, a slowing economy, and customers with tighter budgets, all of which slow revenue growth. The Canadian federal government continues to push for lower prices and increased competition, and recent periods of promotional discounting on wireless and internet services have reduced ARPU growth. Businesses have not returned to the office as was once expected, with office vacancies at all-time highs, reducing enterprise spend on communications services. The increased use of cloud is driving businesses to increase use of internet access while reducing use of more costly data connectivity services. Wireline phone usage continues to decline with wireless voice, texting/messaging, and video calling taking its place. Software cloud-based providers are encroaching on the communications services market as are satellite internet providers. Along with all these pressures on revenue, come increasing costs as debt servicing costs increase due to higher interest rates and employee costs rise due to inflation. It necessitates the adoption of AI-based technologies that can streamline operations to reduce costs, innovation and investment in new service categories to find areas of growth, and a steadfast focus on customer experience to win against competitors," says study author, Praveen Datta, research director of the Canadian Communications Services program at IDC Canada.

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