Insider Monkey
15 Most Valuable Telecom Companies In The World
Insider Monkey Team
8 min read

In This Article:

In this article, we will take a look at 15 most valuable telecom companies in the world. If you want to see more of the most valuable telecom companies in the world, go directly to 5 Most Valuable Telecom Companies In The World.

Telecom companies, otherwise known as telecommunication companies, are companies that allow their customers to communicate with each other through the phone or the internet.

To build their networks, telecom companies generally make huge capital investments that cost billions of dollars and several years. As a result, telecom companies have substantial barriers to entry.

History

The telecom industry began when in 1837 when the first commercial telegraph line went into service in 1937 in London. The industry then underwent a substantial change in 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell made his first phone call.

A few years later, an American company opened the first commercial telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut. The telecom industry in the United States evolved further in 1892 when AT&T began work on its 'long lines' network. As technology advanced, AT&T's phone systems expanded throughout the United States.

In Europe, phone systems also expanded given the substantial demand.

In terms of ownership, however, the United States and Europe differed. Vonage explains the difference, "European countries chose nationalized telephone monopolies as a matter of policy but AT&T was a private monopoly. That piqued the interest of antitrust regulators. In 1913, AT&T and the U.S. Department of Justice struck a deal: AT&T would be allowed its monopoly so long as it fell under the regulation of the new Federal Communications Commission, sold its stake in Western Union, and allowed non-competing local providers to connect to its long-distance network. That gave AT&T the power to decide what telecoms meant and the vast income to invest in what would come next."

As a result of the deal, AT&T dominated the telecom industry in the US until the 1980's when the government decided to break the company up.

In the 2000's, the telecom industry evolved due to the growth of smartphones and the internet and many telecom companies became internet service providers.

Since then, some telecom companies have tried to diversify to other areas such as content creation while others have focused on 5G and trying to get as many new subscribers as possible.

5G could be a substantial opportunity for telecom companies given that faster data speeds could create many new services that people want. As a result, more people might sign up for 5G phone plans to access those services or more existing people could upgrade from slower services to faster 5G services.

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