U.S. Communications-Equipment Orders Jump 43.6% Year Over Year
Preliminary July orders reached $4.891 billion, while industry and company results pointed to demand for networking equipment used in cloud and AI infrastructure.
U.S. manufacturers recorded a sharp rise in nondefense communications-equipment orders in July, highlighting stronger purchase commitments for networking infrastructure used across cloud and artificial-intelligence systems.
July orders reached $4.891 billion, up 43.6% from a year earlier. Orders totaled $30.642 billion from January through July, a 36.8% increase from the same period in 2025.
The figures are preliminary, not seasonally adjusted and subject to survey error and revision. A new order represents an intention to buy equipment for immediate or future delivery, so the measure does not equal completed shipments or recognized revenue.
The communications-equipment category includes networking hardware such as routing and optical-transport systems. AI data centers require high-capacity links among large groups of computing accelerators and between facilities, supporting demand in those equipment segments.
Worldwide telecom-equipment revenue rose 5% in the first half of 2026. Cloud providers accounted for an estimated 55% of industry revenue growth, with demand concentrated in optical transport and high-end routing and aggregation equipment.
Revenue from high-end routing and aggregation products increased 25% year over year in the second quarter. Direct sales to cloud providers rose 94% year over year.
Company results also showed strong networking demand. Keysight Technologies posted $1.345 billion in third-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue for its Communications Solutions Group, up 43% from a year earlier. The quarter ended July 31.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) recorded $2.9 billion in networking revenue during its fiscal third quarter, up 74.9% year over year. Data Center Networking revenue reached $382 million, an increase of 112.2%.
HPE said networking-product order bookings and revenue reached record levels despite supply constraints that limited its ability to convert demand into quarterly revenue.
“AI is becoming a multi-year growth driver for HPE, and our differentiated portfolio positions us to capture that opportunity at scale,” HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri said.
The July orders data connects part of the communications-equipment increase with cloud expansion and AI infrastructure demand, but it does not establish that AI investment caused the entire gain.
