There are a couple of articles on Telecom Ramblings (here and here) about the Snowden effect on US cloud and network hardware sales.

On the one hand, a US company losing a big contract in Europe is a bad thing. On the other hand, it is the bed that they made years ago to regain monopoly standing and become a company too big to fail.

Kind of funny for Germany to be so upset; they spy on every one too.

Snowden's NSA reveals have gotten in the way of a lot of cloud deals for US companies. This mistrust doesn't bode well for global expansion of US companies.

And why do these companies want to expand outside the US? So many reasons.

Unions and pensions are unsettling for their balance sheets.

The US markets are flat -- cellphones, voice, broadband, TV. It's all about scale and getting more efficient.

Consumer spending is flat (or declining) so they can't squeeze more money out of this US bedrock.

Lots of competition from OTT, Netflix, Amazon Prime and other ways for consumers to spend money (that isn't with them).

Declining revenue in wholesale and other sectors due to price compression.

Customer acquisition in the US for hosted VoIP and other services has increased.

If you look at the bigger picture, the telcos haven't innovate or bought innovation in 50 years. All the value they bring is in pipe but all the bigger value is in what happens at the end of that pipe. And because they were the plumbers and got into bed with the government (and received favorable treatment ever since), they are now paying some of that price.