Indian Telcos Navigate Headwinds; Reveals Key Strategies to Unlock Value Amidst 4% TSR and $700 Billion Market Growth: BCG Report
New Delhi: The telecommunications industry stands at a pivotal moment in 2025. Despite a challenging landscape—where median five-year total shareholder return (TSR) lags behind global markets—leading telcos are proving that strategic innovation can unlock significant value.
Boston Consulting Group’s latest Telecommunications Value Creators Report reveals that from 2020 to 2024, telcos in the survey delivered a median annualized TSR of approximately 4%, down from 6% just a year prior. This performance significantly lags behind the S&P 1200 index’s five-year annualized TSR of 12%, placing telcos 31st out of the 33 industries that BCG tracks.
Beyond TSR, BCG also tracks value created, measuring the five-year change in market capitalization plus dividends. The outlook is brighter, with net value rising 21% since last year’s report to nearly $700 billion. Despite industry challenges, 50 of the 73 companies in the sample generated value between 2020 and 2024, totaling approximately $880 billion.
“Telecom companies in India and globally operate in a dynamic market, with a five-year annualized total shareholder return (TSR) of 4%, down from 6% last year. The industry faces high spectrum costs, regulatory complexities, infrastructure challenges, and evolving revenue models. Additionally, Large Traffic Generators (LTGs) utilize telecom infrastructure without directly contributing to its costs.
Companies like Bharti Airtel and Tata Communications have leveraged strategic planning and execution to adapt to the evolving landscape, demonstrating resilience and sustained growth in a dynamic industry.Through BCG’s proprietary research, we have identified four focus areas for the Telecom Sector to tackle the industry’s challenges and create value, including streamlining costs and capex, optimizing strategic assets and simplifying operations, moving to next-gen architectures, and powering up next-gen sales, marketing, and products. The future belongs to agile, AI-first telcos that drive operational efficiency while innovating new revenue streams beyond connectivity”, said Sudhanshu Chawla, Managing Director & Partner, BCG
The report also highlights four focus areas for telcos to drive long-term value creation:
Strategic Asset Optimization: Divest non-core assets, simplify business models, and pursue targeted mergers for greater fous and returns.
Cost and Capex Optimization: Streamline operations and reduce network deployment costs through shared infrastructure and AI-driven efficiency.
Next-Gen Architecture: Modernize networks with cloud-native, Open RAN, and edge solutions to enhance agility and scalability.
Next-Gen Sales, Marketing and Products: B2C – Leverage analytics to deliver personalized offerings. B2B – Modernize offerings to deliver high-value, future-ready solutions.
These focus areas are connected, and to deliver maximum value, they should be combined and be augmented with innovative, business-driven AI as an overarching enabler.
