Telcos at 20 paces: Telstra Corporation Ltd vs.TPG Telecom Ltd and Vocus Group Ltd

A three-way telco smackdown…

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It's been a tough time for telco investors recently, with the Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX:TLS) share price, TPG Telecom Ltd (ASX:TPM) share price and Vocus Group Ltd (ASX:VOC) share price all falling meaningfully over the past 12 months.

Which came as a shock — it was hard to find a more popular and more profitable sector over the prior five years. We were all signing up to more plans, making more calls and using more data. And the laws of supply and demand — when the former was tight and the latter plentiful — meant happy days for telco owners… especially when the flurry of mergers and acquisitions continued apace.

And then the music stopped.

Oh, not the growth in consumption: that has continued unabated. But we're all getting more for either the same or less. And there are simply fewer new contracts being signed. The go-go years seem to be over, and shares fell from stratospheric levels.

Happily, at Motley Fool Share Advisor we sold TPG and Vocus before the rot really set in. Indeed, we rebought one of them just recently at much lower prices.

And we've liked Telstra all along, even if the past 6 months haven't been kind, share-price wise.

The telcos won't grow like topsy from here on in, but that doesn't make them bad investments. In fact, three of our services here at The Motley Fool have waded into the telco space again recently.

And dividends make the journey a little smoother, including the likes of this company you should check out.

Motley Fool contributor Scott Phillips (TMFGilla) has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia owns shares of Telstra Limited, TPG Telecom Limited, and Vocus Communications Limited. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.

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