After monitoring costs for telecom transport providers for greater than 20 years, there are two issues we all know for sure: telecom costs range extensively all over the world, they usually change over time.
As multinational firms throughout industries grapple with worth modifications, they’re additionally reevaluating how cloud, safety, SD-WAN—and ultimately AI—will impression the configuration and prices of their WAN providers. That is why we created this WAN Market Measurement Forecast.
Our WAN Market Measurement Forecast mannequin demonstrates the income impacts of those anticipated modifications for the rest of the 2020s, with web and SD-WAN supplanting a lot of the income that got here from MPLS circuits. Our assumptions had been pushed by our WAN Supervisor Survey, WAN Price Benchmark and WAN Geography Benchmark prospects, and our many conversations with choice makers from each the purchase and promote sides of the enterprise. This evaluation is predicated on the information you may entry in TeleGeography’s Cloud and WAN Analysis Service.
This WAN Market Measurement Forecast covers:
Key Takeaways
- World WAN connectivity income is mainly flat, with a slight decline from $442 billion in 2025 to $433 by 2030.
- MPLS income will fall off a cliff, going from $130 billion to $57 billion.
- Nonetheless, DIA income, bolstered by a rising demand for high-speed ports, will choose up a lot of that slack, rising from $99 billion to $142 billion.
- Income progress is uneven all over the world with some areas such because the U.S. & Canada and Western Europe poised to choose up further income, whereas others like East and South Asia prone to lose income. That is possible because of slower bandwidth demand progress in costlier international locations.
- Many international locations will keep regular of their placement on the highest 25. The U.S. China, and Australia stay within the prime three, nonetheless, some costly markets like India, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates lose floor within the mannequin, because of lack of demand for high-speed ports.
World WAN Connectivity Market Sizes: 2025-2030
World Market Measurement by Main Product Division
The full international WAN market measurement is mainly flat from 2025-2030, transferring from $442 billion in 2025 to $433 billion in 2030. Whereas the general income seems steady, vital shifts are occurring beneath the floor between product classes.
World Income Forecasts for Main WAN Merchandise: 2025-2030
- MPLS: Forecasted to fall sharply from $130 billion in 2025 to $57 billion in 2030.
- DIA: Makes up for a lot of the MPLS loss, rising from $99 billion to $142 billion.
- Native Entry: Stays mainly flat as some entry loops are misplaced to declining MPLS ports, however bigger entry traces are required for high-capacity DIA port connections.
- Broadband: Will increase from $4.5 billion to $6 billion, although it stays a small a part of international income.
- SD-WAN: Projected to almost double from $23 billion to $42 billion.
World WAN Market Measurement by Particular Product Set
Our mannequin breaks out the particular product units to forecast every particular person kind primarily based on the variety of websites and bandwidths they’re prone to be at in all 231 international locations. It may be helpful to see how native entry is cut up between MPLS and DIA, for instance, to know how entry markets could take in the decline of MPLS and rise of larger-port DIA. The next desk highlights the shifting proportion contribution of particular merchandise to the full WAN market income from 2025 to 2030:
World WAN Revenues by Particular Product (Share of Market)
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Market Dynamics:
- Steadiness of Connectivity: There’s a clear shift in dominance as MPLS declines from almost 30% of world income in 2025 to only over 13% in 2030, whereas DIA grows to take almost 33% of the market.
- Native Entry Evolution: Whereas native entry for MPLS is declining, it’s being offset by an increase in native entry for off-net DIA. This income progress is pushed by the necessity for bigger entry traces to assist greater DIA port sizes, at the same time as we assume extra DIA is accessible on-net and thus with out a further entry line.
- SD-WAN Progress: All SD-WAN service varieties are rising in income share because of greater port/circuit sizes and elevated encrypted throughput. Managed SD-WAN is especially robust, as we assume later adopting enterprises will more and more search managed providers, and others depend on extra administration for safety functions.
Regional WAN Connectivity Market Shares
Whereas U.S. & Canada had been barely behind East Asia in 2025, we challenge the area will outpace East Asia by 2030. Most different areas stay comparatively flat as the expansion in DIA, SD-WAN, and broadband offsets the lack of MPLS income. Areas with greater demand for very massive ports will see extra vital progress in comparison with these with smaller port measurement demand. That is even if for all community connectivity merchandise (MPLS, DIA, and broadband) we assumed that costs would fall the quickest for bigger capability circuits. As capability demand grows, though high-speed ports come at a unit value low cost, the upper quantity of capability means extra income than decrease velocity ports at the next value per bit.
Regional Whole WAN Market Measurement Forecast: 2025-2030 (USD hundreds of thousands)
Regional Highlights:
- Progress Leaders: U.S. & Canada and Western Europe are set to develop their income share largely because of the demand for bigger DIA port sizes.
- East Asia Contraction: East Asia is anticipated to fall barely in whole income. That is possible influenced by the dominance of China and a prevalence of decrease port speeds and fewer excessive capability upgrades.
- MPLS to DIA Transition: In lots of areas, precise revenues could fall due to the top of reliance on high-priced MPLS and the adoption of DIA and broadband, which provide a cheaper price per Mbps. As the worth delta between MPLS and DIA varies globally, the lack of MPLS could also be felt extra in sure areas.
Regional Whole WAN Market Measurement Distribution Forecast: 2025-2030
Regional Income Shares:
- Developed Market Progress: Regardless of already low costs and excessive competitors, our mannequin predicts that the share of world WAN income for the U.S. & Canada and Western Europe will develop barely. Once more, that is most certainly because of robust bandwidth demand progress.
- East Asia Dropping Share: We would have anticipated China to develop extra, however depressed bandwidth demand there in comparison with different areas because of the excessive costs and the trio-polistic market, are prone to lower income over time. Our mannequin retains the variety of websites static, so maybe this assumption is much less true in China and actuality would possibly overcome that depressed bandwidth.
- Lengthy Tail Areas: As within the annual mannequin, the remainder of the world are a protracted tail of comparatively small contributions to international WAN income. Most are flat or barely declining. Once more, areas with significantly costly service are prone to shrink in income or income share because of depressed bandwidth demand progress.
Regional WAN Connectivity Market Sizes by Product
MPLS Regional Shares
Our mannequin tasks that international annual income for MPLS will fall from $130 billion to $57 billion. Whereas we assumed international MPLS use is declining from 45% of websites in 2025 to only 18% in 2030, we assumed port speeds for the remaining MPLS ports will improve, although not as aggressively as DIA. Our assumptions about variations in geographic reliance on MPLS didn’t change. So locations with extra MPLS in 2025 like China will nonetheless have extra MPLS in 2030.
Regional MPLS Port Revenues: 2025-2030 (USD hundreds of thousands)
- Income Shifts: U.S. & Canada and Western Europe will see massive income drops for MPLS, however their general contribution to the MPLS market stays regular.
- Excessive-Price Markets: In East Asia (particularly China) and Oceania, the proportion contribution to the worldwide MPLS market really will increase barely as a result of high-speed ports stay very costly in these areas.
DIA Regional Shares
DIA income is rising from $99 billion to $142 billion as demand grows from 65% of websites to 83% within the common enterprise community. This may supplant a lot of the misplaced MPLS income and make a big contribution to maintaining international WAN revenues comparatively regular in the course of the decline of MPLS.
Regional DIA Port Revenues: 2025-2030 (USD hundreds of thousands)
- Main Progress: Our mannequin has the U.S. & Canada, Western Europe, and Oceania seeing vital DIA income progress, even if we assume the best worth strain for DIA in these areas on the bigger port sizes.
- Port Measurement Affect: East Asia grows its DIA income, however its proportion contribution to the worldwide whole shrinks as a result of DIA port sizes are usually smaller in China in comparison with the U.S. or Europe.
- Smaller Areas Contract: Some smaller areas really see a lower in DIA income possible because of having comparatively much less demand for bigger ports, so regardless of a rise in websites operating DIA, worth declines outweigh extra ports.
Entry Regional Shares
World income for native entry is mainly flat within the mannequin. We assume no change to entry costs as it isn’t topic to the traditional community worth declines. Entry costs change over time, however not within the predictable downward path we see within the extra aggressive and standardized community providers market. Regardless of the lack of many MPLS loops, large-capacity loops connecting to off-net DIA are prone to choose up the income slack. Although we assumed that extra DIA can be out there on-net by 2030, a majority continues to be off-net and that is sufficient, together with the transfer towards greater bandwidths, to maintain native entry income from falling.
Regional Entry Revenues: 2025-2030 (USD hundreds of thousands)
- Entry Income Flat: World entry income is flat at roughly $185–$186 billion. Whereas fewer loops are wanted for MPLS, the transfer towards greater port sizes for each remaining MPLS and new DIA ports compensates for that loss.
Broadband Regional Shares
We decreased broadband costs, however solely very barely, with decrease capacities seeing little to no change and better capacities usually round 0.5% to 1% annual declines. It is because broadband is already so cheap that there’s little room for downward strain year-on-year. Whereas costs do expertise some strain at greater speeds, they don’t decline at regular charges like we are inclined to see with community providers. Many enterprises favor DIA to broadband, as a result of they like an uncontended service with SLAs, and since best-efforts broadband in lots of markets can have center mile and different reliability points. Nonetheless, the place high quality broadband is accessible, the worth factors could be engaging. We assume broadband will stay a secondary or backup service for many websites, however nonetheless develop as enterprises go away behind MPLS. In markets with sturdy upstream connections and FTTx it might turn into extra widespread at the same time as main connections.
Regional Broadband Port Revenues: 2025-2030 (USD hundreds of thousands)
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- Broadband: We assume broadband will develop from 35% of websites in 2025 to 47% in 2030. Nonetheless, because of its very low worth factors, it stays a small contributor to the worldwide market, rising from $4.6 billion to $6 billion.
- Main Areas’ Share is Flat: The key areas, U.S. & Canada, Western Europe, and East Asia, are comparatively flat when it comes to proportion contribution to the worldwide broadband market. These areas are the place most of that income progress comes from, however since costs and circuit speeds are rather more uniform globally than community providers, their contributions don’t change a lot.
- Smaller Areas Lose Share: As with different merchandise, some smaller and costlier areas contract in income share as a result of we assumed prospects received’t transfer as much as a lot bigger bandwidths.
SD-WAN Regional Shares
We didn’t alter SD-WAN costs, each as a result of we’ve got not traditionally seen predictable worth declines as we do in community providers, and likewise as a result of the market has consolidated drastically. The few remaining gamers are possible to have the ability to preserve costs regular (or doubtlessly even increase them). We assume that the transition to SD-WAN will proceed by way of the last decade and improve from 45% of websites on common to 76% by 2030. As such, international SD-WAN income is projected to develop from $23 billion to $42 billion.
Regional SD-WAN Port Revenues: 2025-2030 (USD hundreds of thousands)
- Stability: Income elevated throughout all areas, however in fact the key areas noticed the most important absolute progress by far.
- East Asian decline: Contribution of East Asia shrank a bit possible because of much less aggressive bandwidth progress.
- Concentrated Income: U.S. & Canada and Western Europe are anticipated to contribute extra to the worldwide totals by 2030 because of excessive bandwidth and encrypted throughput necessities.
Nation WAN Connectivity Market Sizes: 2025-2030
The impression of WAN transformation is exclusive to every nation’s relative degree of bandwidth demand, aggressive panorama, and pricing construction. Key elements that went into figuring out income shares within the mannequin had been beginning bandwidth demand and regional demand progress, beginning costs and regional worth declines, and product combine shifts away from costly MPLS towards DIA.
Nation WAN Connectivity Market Share: 2025-2030
Nation Observations:
- Prime Tier Stability: The US and China are anticipated to stay the highest two markets globally. Australia stays in third place because of excessive bandwidth demand and better prices stemming from its geographic isolation.
- India’s Decline: India is projected to fall 4 locations as its excessive prices result in decrease bandwidth demand in comparison with different international locations transferring towards higher-revenue massive ports with decrease unit prices.
- Center East Slips: The most important drops in rating happen within the Center East, with Saudi Arabia falling six locations and the UAE falling eight. That is possible because of the persistence of excessive costs resulting in decrease demand for high-revenue producing bigger ports. Whilst circuit sizes develop globally, these smaller ports can be outpaced in income by the very massive ports discovered in additional aggressive areas.
How We Forecast the WAN Market
Our predictive mannequin used our 2025 WAN Market Measurement annual mannequin because the baseline and drew our assumptions ahead 5 years to 2030 primarily based on costs we’ve got collected for 20 years, enterprise demand developments we’ve got collected since 2018, and our experiences benchmarking enterprise networks since 2013. The important thing assumptions that influenced the outcomes are:
- Product combine: the proportion of websites that can be utilizing MPLS, DIA, broadband, and SD-WAN. We assumed that MPLS use will proceed to say no whereas DIA, broadband, and SD-WAN use will improve.
- Port and Circuit sizes: The share of websites that can fall into the port and circuit sizes for which we gather costs throughout all merchandise. We assumed that port/circuit sizes would improve, and we diversified this improve by product, with DIA rising probably the most.
- MPLS backup methods: As MPLS utilization decreases and SD-WAN adoption ramps up, we assume that almost all of the remaining MPLS service can be with out lively backups, as DIA or broadband usually complement the service.
- DIA on-net entry: The share of websites which have “on-net” DIA that didn’t want a further entry line. We assumed that as ISPs develop networks, extra DIA websites can be on-net.
- SD-WAN bandwidth ranges: The typical whole SD-WAN encrypted throughput we anticipate to see by web site throughout all connectivity merchandise. We assume that as MPLS, DIA, and broadband circuit sizes improve, the encrypted throughput quantities going by way of SD-WAN gadgets/service will improve accordingly.
- SD-WAN administration ranges: The share of SD-WAN websites falling inside unmanaged, fundamental managed, and premium managed providers—the three pricing tiers we gather. We assumed that as SD-WAN adoption strikes to later adopters, managed providers will turn into extra standard, because the early adopters usually tend to need extra management. We additionally assumed that as SD-WAN is more and more a safety expertise, self administration will turn into much less widespread.
- Community service costs: We made assumptions in regards to the costs for every service and the way they could change over time. On this run, we assumed a slight lower in costs globally. We adjusted the proportion annual lower primarily based on product, subregion, and port/circuit sizes, and our assumed annual decreases ranged from 0-5%. We assume DIA would have probably the most aggressive worth declines, adopted by MPLS, with the least strain for broadband. For all three merchandise, we assumed costlier massive circuits can be below barely extra worth strain. We didn’t deflate SD-WAN or native entry costs in any respect, as a result of market dynamics there usually tend to result in worth stability.
Assumed Constants
We additionally assumed sure elements will possible keep considerably the identical over the following 5 years, or is not going to impression international income:
- We assumed international web site counts for enterprises with at the least 1,000 workers would keep the identical, as some could develop, others shrink, some get acquired and others are absorbed.
- Geographic combine—the proportion of websites in every area or nation—would keep considerably the identical.
- Native entry distances—proportion of websites inside every entry distance vary by nation—would keep the identical.
We then ran every annual set of assumptions by way of the identical mannequin used for the 2025 annual report, with variables adjusted accordingly. This evaluation is concentrated solely on the median-median mannequin run that we used for many of our evaluation within the annual report in our Cloud and WAN Analysis Service.
Universe of Enterprise Networks
As within the 2025 annual mannequin, we assumed there are 35,000 international enterprises with 1,000 or extra workers. This leads to roughly 13,000,000 international WAN websites to attach throughout 231 international locations or political/geographical models within the median-median mannequin.
World WAN Market Outlook
Predicting the way forward for WAN income is advanced, however present knowledge suggests a slight decline within the WAN connectivity market by way of 2030. Whereas general income stays comparatively steady, an enormous transition is underway as enterprises transfer away from MPLS—lengthy the market’s main income driver—in favor of cloud-friendly, decentralized options like SD-WAN and DIA.
Key Takeaways:
- Bandwidth as a Income Offset: Though DIA presents a decrease value per bit, surging bandwidth demand for cloud providers, video, and doubtlessly AI is anticipated to offset a lot of the income misplaced from declining MPLS circuits.
- Secure Native Entry: Regardless of the lack of MPLS loops, the entry market stays steady because the transition to higher-bandwidth DIA ports requires bigger, higher-capacity connections.
- Strategic Pivot for Carriers: Recognizing that pure connectivity is now not a high-growth space, carriers are more and more shifting their focus towards MSP providers, AIOps, and transferring “up the stack” to seize new income streams.
Except AI adoption or different rising applied sciences radically alter present developments, this mannequin represents a believable trajectory for a market present process basic structural change.
Get all this knowledge—straight from the supply
The entire knowledge on this WAN market measurement forecast got here from our Cloud and WAN Analysis Service platform. Entry probably the most full, unbiased international telecom knowledge and evaluation from TeleGeography specialists. See a video tour of the platform and be taught extra right here.
