Federal spending on Wireless communications will boom in the next five years, said Chris Campbell, a senior analyst at government-intelligence firm Input, in an interview. "No individual segment of the telecommunications market has seen as explosive growth as the wireless segment," he said. "The advantage afforded by being able to stay in constant communication with key personnel, whether they're on the battlefield or in a remote office, greatly enhances an agency's ability to perform its mission."

Wireless spending should grow at almost twice the rate of spending for the overall federal telecom market, jumping from $1.9 billion in fiscal year 2005 to $3.3 billion in 2010, Campbell said. Overall federal telecom spending is expected to grow from $16 billion this fiscal year to nearly $21.4 billion in fiscal 2010, driven heavily by E-government and Presidential Management Agenda objectives, Input said in a study released last week. Next year will be the first in which spending on leased data lines surpasses that on leased voice lines.

"New technologies, new competitors, and a slew of mergers and acquisitions are changing the overall landscape of a market that historically has been rather static and controlled by a limited number of industry heavyweights," Campbell said. "Now, even systems integrators are emerging as dominant vendors for market share in the federal telecom market."