While operator revenues will grow to over $1 trillion by 2016, market research firm Juniper Research warns in a new report that these service providers could face a "nightmare" scenario that would see operator costs outpacing revenues within four years unless corrective action is taken. Juniper found that operators' core revenues are either flat or declining in a number of markets, while the rise in data traffic is causing backhaul cost to spiral upwards. The company forecasts network data traffic to increase by more than 13x to 25,000 Petabytes per year by 2015. On the bright side, Juniper believes that operators can redress the balance by adopting a series of adaptive strategies designed to optimise core revenue streams, develop new revenues and significantly reduce operating costs. Release