Trends 2016: The growing age of ICT

By J Venkat

The last two decades have seen the incessant transformation in the way technical information waves have driven the development of the telecom industry. However, the industry is coming to a saturation point and is likely to face new situations in creating a route map for further progress.

The top 5 trends likely to be noted in the coming years’ are as follows:

1 . Flexibility of Mobility: The progress of mobile connectivity in the country has been noted to surpass fixed line connectivity. The demand for this requirement continues to grow and is finding increased penetration mostly across the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities of India. Lower income groups are also in the fray of owning handsets, even when landline connectivity is still an option. Mobile phones are inexpensive, convenient, more efficiently used and easily available.

2. Digital India-The driving force: With the upcoming initiatives being launched by the Central Government like Digital India and Smart Cities, Wi-Fi enabled cities are becoming the need of the country and are setting the pace for a new trend. Public Wi-Fi is expected to become a big phenomenon in the coming years as the government and private sector initiatives are out to generate a spurt in Wi-Fi hotspots. According to a survey conducted by PwC, Indians have become the biggest users of Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter, especially on hand-held devices. This has led to an increase in Indian enterprises and SMEs adopting cloud-based services to increase the quality and reach of their offerings.

3. Data Bandwidth and Security: Last year, PwC had predicted that data consumption would grow across all band-widths like 2G, 3G, fixed broadband and 4G. This turned out to be true and at this point in time Long Term Evolution (LTE) is likely to be the next big thing. Long-Term Evolution, commonly known as 4G LTE, is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals. It is based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA network technologies, increasing the capacity and speed using a different radio interface together with core network improvements. A number of Indian subscribers can be expected to launch 4G on a more efficient 1800 MHz spectrum. Telecom and mobile service carriers, being the custodians of networks, play an essential role in fighting emerging security threats. Customers are likely to expect and demand efficient and proactive protection from the entire internet value chain. Hence, service carriers will be expected to support a widespread range of technical and operational innovations.

4. Integrated associations with content service providers: Unconventional data monetization options are expected to be launched and staying connected will continue to become cheaper. Connectivity is capturing a smaller proportion of the information value chain while content, service, and product deliverers capture more. There is a possibility of one or more major telecom companies to be acquired by the content industry.

5. Internet of Things: The essence of the Internet of Things is to apply information and communication technology (ICT) to different industries. Thus realising "Intelligent Perception and Intelligent Control" via the adoption of ICT and achieving the objective of "efficiency improvement, scientific decision making, energy saving and environmental protection, and cost savings" to promote the upgrade and development of human society from an electronic society (E-society) to a ubiquitous society (U society). According to a report by Huawei, The Internet of Things describes an unprecedented blueprint for industries such as telecom and IT. It is predicted that by 2020, the ratio between machine type communications to human type communications will reach 30:1, which will allow operators to extend their subscriber base from 6 billion people to 50 billion or even over a trillion machines and objects, this opens a new door and serves as the basis to "surpass population and developing new subscribers" for the telecom industry.

This major trend will impact mobile communication and further contribute to the global village concept through the usage of connected devices.

Keeping pace with the mentioned drifts, telecom service providers can apply themselves to potentially tap and achieve a higher growth through the trending initiatives.

(The author, J Venkat, is director, is Maxeed- Telecom and Utility Solutions)