Globally, Gartner expects telecommunications network providers to slowly increase spending until - some three years from now - spending will be back to the levels it reached before the telecoms crash.

"Compared with spending between 1998 and 2001, the global telecom NSP [network service provider] capital expenditure as a percentage of revenue is significantly lower and seems to be settling at 15 percent to 18 percent," Gartner says in a research note. "For suppliers to NSPs, the overall compound annual growth rate of their revenue will reach 6.6 percent between 2004 and 2008. This will be fuelled by phenomenal rates of growth and pent-up demand in large Asian countries, and by NSPs in Western economies renewing their networks."