Keshab Panda, CEO and managing director of L&T Technology Services, says telecom companies face unique challenges and opportunities that stem from technology innovations and customer demands.
By harnessing innovative technology solutions and services, the telecom and consumer electronics sectors are poised to address demand for new services while improving customer experience and margins.
Being at the heart of the digital convergence, chipmakers, telecom OEMs and service providers are rapidly increasing their innovation bandwidth and transforming themselves faster than the rate of change around. Based on our discussions with leading global telecom players, these are the following major trends that I see reshaping the industry.
NFV and SDN- New paradigms
With OPEX emerging as the preferred business model of entities and even more so of telecom service providers, technological advancements such as NFV (Network Function Virtualization) which transform the infrastructure from a capital intensive proposition to a software dependent approach will see rise in uptake. Hardware expenditure would be drastically cut and the go-to-market time would also be shrunk significantly.
Network Function Virtualization allows network elements used by network operators to be virtualized and executed on private as well as public cloud environments.
It has emerged as a foundation to bring in the much needed Auto-scaling, Flexibility of Network Operations and automated service creation to meet the burgeoning demands of the users of the telecom networks and services. It also allows extreme flexibility to operators to use Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) from a variety of VNF vendors and open-source solutions bringing in choice and reduced cost of operations and upgrades. With NFV, Managed Network services will reach a new paradigm with vendors expected to not only provide a compelling cost proposition but also a technology capability assurance.
Software-defined networking or SDN as it is popularly known, is changing the way a network is designed, built, and operated to achieve business agility. SDN framework transforms a closed & proprietary network, into an open and programmable component of the larger cloud infrastructure. This gives network owners and operators the ability to complement NFV very well and SDN is also expected to witness rise in uptake and penetration in the coming year.
Horizontal realization
The digital revolution is leading towards an integrated ecosystem with multiple functions and processes across products and industries converging into one. We have already been experiencing proliferation of Telecom technology into the Automotive sector. Connected driverless cars, industrial robots, bots-based services are some of the real-time applications that are expected to witness rise in uptake. While the talks have largely revolved around the applications of IoT and how the world would look like in such an ecosystem, the new-year would witness actual rollout of IoT with telecom connectivity as the backbone. This connectivity that spans the wired and wireless medium at equal length will widen the concept of IoT i.e. Internet of Things to IoE i.e. Internet of Everything.
Thus, the relevance of telecom services particularly from a connectivity point of view will be in prominence like never before.
Smart assistants on the rise
The year 2016 resulted in ‘humanization’ of devices such as Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri to name a few. The main intention is to gain control of emerging primary digital interface i.e. the mobile device screen. We can expect each of these companies to build on their unique strengths as they pursue strategies that will give them greater presence across devices, use cases, and geographies.
Thus the world will continue to converge into a mobile device and the year 2017 will continue to witness disruptive innovation that will further converge the physical world onto the hand held device. Smart assistant products namely voice recognition, AR and VR will gain the next level of consumer acceptance and uptake. Other trends expected to gain pace in the New Year would be connected driverless cars, drones, personal healthcare trackers. All these will require new levels of engineering and data analytics.
Mobile devices landscape may witness commercialization of prototypes of features such as dual touch screen with a rich end user experience.
Smart Living as an Experience
While Smart Cities have gained prominence in conversation during the ongoing year, a more nuclear form of it in way of Smart Living will emerge as a lifestyle trend that will again converge onto the mobile device. Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon’s Echo are initial innovations in this space. Partnerships that expand these ecosystems will be the short-term focus, but the strength of each company’s AI will ultimately determine the connected home winner.
Moreover the advent of advanced robotics, especially personal and service robots will enhance all facets of the Smart Living experience from homes to consumer electronics. The recent frightening speed at which human innovation has taken place, has paved way for robotic innovations like AI-powered Industrial bots, social robots helping with household chores and supporting the elderly and disabled.
Cognitive is the New Smart
Cognitive computing has gained exponential relevance with everday appliances such as lighting, machines being evolved to artificial intelligence enabled devices i.e. in short IoT taking over the conventional appliances space.
New-age concepts such as deep learning, neural networks will enable development of more advanced systems that can analyse and predict changes to be incorporated in network management. Such a framework will lead to creation of even more intelligent network devices and the dependency on human intervention will also be minimized.
Over the Top Services
In 2012, a little known mobile app called WhatsApp disrupted the global telecom business by offering free multi-media messaging services to mobile phone users, a classic example of a little known new entrant creating a paradigm shift in the industry.
As the start-up or app ecosystem gains popularity by each passing day, over the top (OTT) services will over score the conventional voice and data services. From an industry perspective, platforms or solutions that enable quick implementation and hosting of OTT content will gain customer acceptance. OTT requires the cross pollination of technologies across telecom, cloud and mobile technologies.
Engineering services firms are increasingly providing value added solutions and services with leading OEMs, Operators and Technology Providers on developing and deploying products and services for the Broadcast, Triple-Play, Unified Communication and Home Networking ecosystem.
Keshab Panda, CEO and managing director of L&T Technology Services
