New WTA report “Inside the Top Operators,” sheds light on key teleport strategies

The World Teleport Association (WTA) has released Inside the Top Operators, an annual report on revenue growth, markets, services and pricing, and how leading teleport operators are responding to the trends.

“This is the 17th edition of a report that drills into the operating results, mix of customer segments and pricing experience of the world’s largest and fastest-growing independent teleport operators,” said executive director and report author Robert Bell. “COVID-19 became a global pandemic last year, and its impact on teleport operators varied tremendously based on the markets they served and how it also affected satellite and fiber transmission costs. Those impacts continued in 2021 and drove decision-making across the industry.”

WTA members can access the report by signing into their accounts on the WTA website. The report is free for WTA Members and available for purchase by others. Members may directly download the report by following this link.

The teleport industry is not large by global standards, but it plays an outsize role in connecting the networks and applications in the sky with terrestrial suppliers and users of services. Since 2004, WTA has published its Top Teleport Operator rankings based on an annual survey of operators as well as review of financial data from publicly-traded firms. In addition to financial data, the Top Operator candidates share information on trends in markets, pricing and services at the end of 2020, on which this report is based.

Data from Top Operator candidates has revealed a number of trends for this year. In general, teleports have fared well in a time when connectivity has had to stand in for so much human interaction, but outcomes have depended on the unique exposure of each company to the markets it serves. Satellite capacity spending by teleport operators continues to decline overall, however, the picture is mixed. Teleport operators appear to be following two distinct paths in their use of satellite, either minimizing the purchase for resale or making resale a significant part of their business model. Last year was also a challenging one for pricing.