15/11/2021
3 trends to look out for in the telecom sector by 2022
By: Omar Abdul-Hafiz
As the world continues to witness radical changes on the economic and technological landscapes, we can see a lot of rapidly trending changes in how we do business. For example, Deloitte, the multinational professional services network, told its staff earlier this year that they can work from home, forever! This tendency of many companies around the world to include working from home into their normal business policies thus leaves a lot of pressure on providing them with better, more reliable communication tools. After all, a remote work environment is simply futile without a reliable Internet connection and handy voice and video conferencing tools.
As such, the race towards better, more advanced telecommunication technologies will only continue to intensify. In light of this, here are a few of the most trending communications technologies to look out for in the next couple of years.
5G rollout to gain momentum
5G technology has been making a lot of noise in the world especially in the past few years. It is only expected that this will continue to intensify as we get closer and closer to wide scale 5G adoption across the world.
The call for 6-GHz Licensing
In a recent update in the race toward 5G, GSMA, the leading industry organization that represents the interests of mobile network operators around the world, has called on Governments to License 6 GHz to Power 5G. According to the GSMA, “the global future of 5G is at risk if governments fail to align on licensing 6 GHz spectrum”. This comes at a time when the debates over 6-GHz band adoption are heating up among the major players and governments. In a collaborative effort including 4 major GSMA members –Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, and ZTE-- , the recommendation is to use mid-band frequency range of 6- GHZ , spanning 5,925 to 7,125 MHz, which is, as per their argument, vital for a successful 5G rollout and can contribute $2.2 trillion to global GDP.
It appears that the 5G worldwide rollout is about to witness big progress as soon as these issues have been resolved among the big investors and governments. And from the looks of it, chances are we might witness this progress sometime within the year 2022.
New frontiers for the MVNO market
The MVNO trend emerged as a market established by communication companies of different sizes offering low-cost long-distance calling without having to use telecom infrastructure of their own. Interestingly enough, this market continues to thrive and evolve not just in a single turn, but in various niches. Nowadays, MVNOs are growing into a whole new level of sophistication, reaching out to new customer segments as well as value propositions.
In this light, here are three of the most groundbreaking changes going on in the MVNO market that may be worth noting.
- The road to 5G: Overall, telecom service consumers are becoming ever more sophisticated and aware of their needs, and the MVNO market is not an exception. This is especially true when we consider the growing demand for 5G networks. As such, MVNO’s will have to request access to 5G from their host operators if they wish to stay in the game.
- The Internet of Things: the rollout of 5G will give the IoT market a major boost. With more and more people demanding support for IoT from their telecom service providers, MVNO’s will soon have to tap into this trend as quickly and efficiently as possible if they want to stay relevant to their customers.
- Momentum in Enterprise: As the MVNO market grows, many enterprises are starting to provide mobile services for their staff and partners. This may lead them to become active MVNOs themselves to a certain degree. One such example, mentioned in the article above, is Uber in Brazil.
Cloud-based services
We previously talked about the latest trends for creating an ideal virtual management process in the remote-work and Work-From-Home era. And indeed, the recent pandemic has taught organizations of all sizes a number of hard lessons. One of these lessons is that they should re-think the efficiency and scalability of their systems. And this is where Cloud-based services can prove highly effective.
As opposed to on-site systems which tend to require a lot of maintenance, not to mention that they cost a lot of money, cloud-based services are designed to take all of this off your back. With a cloud service, you simply no longer have to be concerned about maintenance issues as they will be handled by a designated team of professionals.
It is worth noting here that Cloud services range in terms of type and delivery. The most common ones are SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. To learn more about these Cloud service deployments, check out our article on the subject here.
What are the number saying?
Statistically, the Cloud market is growing at a very speedy rate. A recent Gartner report predicts significant growth in global spending on Cloud services from $396,147 billion in 2021 to $482,155 billion by 2022 at a rate of 21.7%. According to some experts, this growth is expected to result in the flourishing to several emerging Cloud trends.
A telecom perspective
In this context, telecom operators are looking to diversity their product offerings and revenue even further. One way they have been doing that is by offering Cloud-based software subscriptions. This does actually make business sense since they already have the infrastructure, connectivity, and market reach needed for achieving this.
In addition, the concept of cloud-based telephony has been around for quite a while now. The basic idea behind it is that instead of installing a tradition PBX phone system, you can have a “hosted” phone IP-based PBX system that uses the Internet to connect all your extensions together.
The Cloud-based phone system brings several advantages. For one thing, it is typically much cheaper as they come at a much lower initial expense and Capital Expenditure “CapEx”. Furthermore, being a Cloud-based system, this makes them more flexible as you can make changes and additions instantly as needed.
Usage of such systems is only expected to increase as the world shifts to Cloud-based services as an elastic and efficient alternative to traditional in-house systems. And in order to thrive in the competition, CaaS providers must offer their clients enhanced services that meet the rising demand for value, cost-effectiveness, as well as convenience.
Great things are happening
In short, the telecom industry is witnessing great developments many of which will likely see the light in 2022. This especially comes as the world is coming back stronger out of a pandemic that brought us several lessons to be learned in many different realms of business. One of the most important of these lessons is that such great technologies can play a vital role in protecting business continuity during volatile and sensitive times.
Take a look at ESKADENIA’s wide range of Telecom software systems here.