Telcos in the Asia-Pacific region are expected to face increasing risks due to changing business profiles, including deregulation, a shift in revenue mix to lower-margin new services, higher capital spending requirements and declining market share. Standard and Poor's notes that, in line with global trends, a particularly huge challenge for telcos in the region has to do with addressing the decline in fixed-line services growth due to substitution by wireless services. Huge capital investments are required to allow operators to replace their public switched telephone networks with next-generation networks. Despite the challenges, S&P's overall outlook for the industry is stable.
Industry Report Card: Mixed Signals for Asia-Pacific Telecommunications Companies
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