Team Partners Telecommunications

Looking into the Future

Posted on Jun 26, 2022

Any Jubilee celebration, especially one celebrating extraordinary longevity, carries with it both joy and at least a tinge of sadness, with these emotions attaching themselves both to memories of the past as well as thoughts of the future. We leave behind both happy and sad memories. We look forward with both anticipation and, well, if not dread, then at least uncertainty, what does the future really hold?

But then the likes of Deloitte and McKinsey produce reports outlining their visions for the future and all appears rosy again! So, what are the top trends in telecommunications at the moment? What can we expect to see more of as the next few years unfold? Let’s have a look!

We’ve spoken before about the Internet of Things and the inter-relatedness of devices in increasingly affecting our lives. Expect to see more! The trend is towards much more connectivity, with far larger organisations using this connectivity to streamline their management. Phrases such as “condition-based monitoring” and “predictive maintenance” will be every-day parlance as inspection teams are replaced by IoT enabled devices that keep an ever-vigilant eye on everything, reporting back by the second.

How?
One British company is developing a communications protocol with a high level of security for the IoT, enabling companies to work on different devices and operating systems that are compatible with existing infrastructure. This standard will help manufacturers to reduce production and operational expenses. All going well and this will be the frame on which to hang all the presently fragmented IoT activity.

Consider connectivity. With the exponential growth in data transfer, IoT devices and the sheer volume of internet usage worldwide, added to the increased use of satellite communications, the ability to connect across media at high speeds is paramount. So is the need to be able to monitor for both potential and actual stress and breakdown in the fibre-optics that are the arteries of connectivity. A German company is producing sensors that can be embedded safely in nearly every type of fibre optics. A Spanish satellite communications company is now able to merge satellite with terrestrial networks using 5G protocol. It’s secure, transparent and customer data is safe.

We’ve also spoken, at length, about 5G and how it will change the way we do just about everything that’s data driven. Watch this space!

No blog looking to the future could fail to mention Artificial intelligence, AI. An American start-up is working on a platform that combines network connectivity, cyber security and analytics operating in Edge networks., analysing data using a Machine Learning algorithm. This platform will transform industrial, healthcare, defence and energy industries and, again as we’ve said in the past, technology will get an awful lot smarter because of it!

Lastly, for this blog, we should mention clarity. More to the point, high-resolution content. Yes, we can play games and watch programmes at the moment, but one of the big changes we’re going to be seeing is in the near future is the availability of really high-resolution content in video, images and music. 5G will be a vital ingredient, but so will new media such as virtual, augmented and mixed reality. We’ll also be seeing a new wave in cloud-based gaming, at least those who enjoy such things will. An American start-up is creating tools to make 3D app development easier. These focus on cross-platform augmented and virtual reality programs, making today’s single user, single device experiences a thing of the past. It’s a new world!