12/3/2007 -- Bust, schmust: If market watcher International Data Corp. (IDC) can be believed, there's growth aplenty in the telecommunications infrastructure segment -- if not quite the gangbuster growth of years past.

That's the upshot of IDC's newest forecast update, "Worldwide Telecommunications Equipment 2007-2011." Notwithstanding its garrulous title, there's plenty of interesting stuff in IDC's latest telecom market forecast.

Through 2011, it says, telecom infrastructure revenues will grow at a compound annual rate of 4.2 percent -- modest and acceptable expansion, to be sure, but expansion enough for all that.

Nor is IDC just pulling numbers out of its posterior: Through the first half of this year, the market watcher says, network equipment sales to telecom service providers notched a strong overall performance, thanks to revenue growth from optical transport, broadband access, and routing and switching equipment.

"Consolidation of major networks and overall network expansion enabling increased wireless backhaul and video distribution to multiple screens will continue to spur service provider investments on new infrastructure for the foreseeable future," said David Emberley, research manager for Telecommunications Equipment at IDC, in a statement.

Elsewhere, IDC reported, optical networking revenues will approach $14 billion by the end of 2011, with the fastest growth coming in the metro WDM space.

And while the telecom segment as a whole is growing at only a modest clip, IP router and switch revenues will continue to expand at double-digit rates, according to IDC. What's driving this growth? Demand for new video infrastructure and distribution services, the market watcher said.

Surprisingly, IDC reported the wireless share of the telecom infrastructure market will decline to less than half over the forecast period, largely because service providers will increase their investments in wire-line infrastructure over the same period. Similarly, legacy gear -- including DLCs, ATM switches and SONET/SDH -- will also decline through 2011 as carriers migrate to all-IP architectures. --Stephen Swoyer