IoT

The Exciting Promise of Generative AI in the Telecom Sector

The telecom sector is experiencing rapid technological evolution and adoption. Telecom-specific technologies heralded by the coming of 5G and the rise of themes like OpenRAN, and network virtualization are helping improve efficiency and performance. The rise of technologies such as cloud, IoT, and 5G are also helping this sector improve operational efficiencies and elevate security. They are also helping in fraud prevention and helping companies drive personalized customer experiences.

Rising cost pressures and increasing competition are further incentivizing technology exploration for telecom and network operators, CSPs, and others operating in the telecom universe.

Generative AI is emerging as a new force promising transformational outcomes to the telecom industry and helping them navigate some of their most pressing challenges.

Why should the telecom sector pay attention to Generative AI?

AI has been one of the most talked-about technologies of our time. Generative AI is expected to be bigger and more impactful.

Reports suggest that the Generative AI market is to grow a staggering US$1.3 trillion in the next 10 years. The global Generative AI in telecom market size, estimated at USD 150.81 million in 2022, is expected to touch approximately USD 4,883.78 million by 2032.

Generative AI could find many applications in telecom and has a large impact area. For instance, it could allow telcos to work with huge data volumes and give them insights into identifying patterns to drive a positive impact on the bottom line. It promises to create opportunities to redefine how the telecom sector operates, engage with customers, optimize services, secure operations, and drive profits.

Generative AI seems to have the potential to solve complex problems and find several application areas in the telecom ecosystem.

Some of them are:

Network performance optimization

Telecom networks are vast and complex. Thousands of interconnected components run this ecosystem. Network reliability and performance are of paramount importance.

Generative AI can improve the performance, efficiency, and reliability of telecommunications networks to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of different customer segments. The technology can also support 5G initiatives by providing intelligence for load balancing and traffic shaping.

CSPs can use Generative AI solutions to unearth advice from vast amounts of unstructured data. This helps in network performance optimization, operating cost management, avoiding over or under-provisioning resources, and overall network management improvement.

Resource planning, management, and optimization

Telecos can now use the power of Generative AI to plan and build networks more efficiently to improve network performance and improve costs. This technology allows telcos to extract insights from unstructured data. This allows them to analyze data from sources such as social media, emails, customer calls, etc. to predict future demand for services.

It can analyze large data sets on network usage and predict where resources are likely to be needed. Better resource allocation capabilities directly translate to better user experience, improved customer experience, and more cost optimization.

Security and fraud detection

AI has been at work helping telcos enhance the security of their networks for a while now. With Generative AI telcos can examine larger, unstructured data sets, and set rules and user behaviors. This allows them to identify patterns that detect malicious activities and attacks proactively and effectively.

Generative AI allows telcos to move beyond static rules to address rapidly evolving and advanced threats targeting CSP networks. Algorithms that adapt to the changing threat landscape, automate anomaly detection and enable automatic remediation actions. These can present relevant data to human security analysts for faster issue detection and resolution.

Enable innovation and accelerate R&D

One of the emerging challenges in the telecom sector is the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. Maintaining data privacy and security is becoming important for compliance with regulations like GDPR.

Generative AI can generate large volumes of synthetic data. This makes it uniquely positioned to help telecom companies and CSPs fuel innovation exploration and accelerate research and development.

Synthetic data resembles real data. It can thus be used to test and develop solutions. It can also be used to drive analytics and probabilities without exposing customer/sensitive information. This helps telcos drive their innovation agendas while maintaining data privacy, mitigating risks, and ensuring compliance.

Customer Experience

Generative AI presents numerous opportunities to influence customer experience. These range from user behavior modeling to predict customer response to new services, pricing models, and network changes. It could also be possible to identify ways to enhance service delivery with generative AI-powered chatbots as well as to adopt more intelligent CRM systems.

Intelligent virtual assistants can help the telecom sector improve operational efficiencies by relieving customer service agents of routine tasks and freeing them up for more complex assignments.

Generative AI can be used to power CRM systems and analyze extensive real-time data to gain deep insights into customer behavior. It helps companies identify potential churn risks, reduce response times, and enhance support experiences. Gen AI can analyze customer interactions, sentiment, and behavior data to grasp customer sentiments and preferences, foresee customer requirements and preemptively tackle potential concerns.

Smart Billing

Telcos can add greater intelligence to billing systems, increase billing accuracy, and reduce manual work and human errors with Generative AI. The technology can analyze customer usage data and behavior patterns and assist in creating personalized billing plans that improve customer satisfaction and reduce billing disputes.

Generative AI also finds application in fraud mitigation with a powerful algorithm ecosystem that examines trends and abnormalities in network data. The telecom sector can look at Generative AI to prevent phishing, sim-card cloning, and other security vulnerabilities and protect sensitive infrastructure and consumer data from unauthorized access or attacks.

Generative AI holds tremendous potential to drive transformational outcomes in the telecom sector. It will be interesting to see how the industry progresses to adopt it.

Top Trends, Influences, and Technologies Driving Telecom Product Development

Today, almost every business can find at least one telecom product within their digital ecosystem. From voice call-enabled services to SMS authentication, they help companies elevate their digital experience significantly.

But, it’s noteworthy that the need for a communications solution has transformed over the years. To understand the trends driving telecom product development, it’s essential to granularly understand this evolved need.

Why Are the Demands From a Telecom Product Different Today from the Past?

Earlier, telecom companies were only seen from the perspective of a network provider building and maintaining the communication hardware. But fast forward to today, telecom companies are strategic partners. They enable businesses of all sizes to scale and succeed with their digital aspirations. In essence, they create the connectivity infrastructure needed to effectively exchange data and information in a digital environment.

Consumers today expect digital-first experiences for almost all their needs, from shopping to healthcare. As businesses expand, telecom products are at the forefront of driving meaningful connections between businesses and consumers.

Areas like customer onboarding, customer experience enhancement, security and authentication, etc. have been transformed significantly courtesy of modern telecom product development initiatives.

It is certain that at least one of the apps you use daily on your smartphone leverages an OTP mechanism via an SMS or a missed call. A telecom product realizes either of these authentication mechanisms. Similarly, there are several capabilities that a telecom product offers to businesses for managing their digital channels.

So, What Drives Telecom Product Development Today?

As we have seen, a telecom product serves as a fundamental building block of modern digital experiences for several businesses. Therefore, development initiatives should ideally incorporate the key traits that define digital experiences.

Let us explore the top four trends that telecom product development initiatives must make special note of:

Seamless Customer Experience

Studies show that 32% of customers would leave a brand after just one poor experience. While building a telecom product, the core ideology that powers every workflow should be to provide a great customer experience. This can be achieved by using customer centricity as a core element of every development initiative.

Speed of Services

Speed is a critical element of customer experience, but it deserves a special mention from a telecom perspective. Today, customers value time more than anything else. Studies show that customer loyalty will improve by over 2.4 times if their problems are solved quickly.

In that light, processes like user onboarding should not take too much time. They often rely on telecom solutions for KYC authentication and user validation. When such products are built, speed should be a major development criterion.

By using solutions that provide easy authentication and faster enablement of Digital KYC processes, businesses can accelerate their customer journey rapidly.

Secure Experiences

We have seen how seamless and fast customer experiences make for great traits in a product development initiative. Alongside them, security is another characteristic that can’t be ignored. As more digital services become enabled and managed through telecom services, it is critical to eliminate any vulnerabilities.

However, preventing fraud will be a major challenge for businesses as they seek to plug leaking revenue and protect customer interests. Therefore, products with anti-fraud intelligence and fraud prevention workflows will be key.

Continuous Innovation

Consumers love innovation in technology that serves them great experiences. This is probably why AI and machine learning have become so mainstream today. For telecom product development, the situation is no different.

Businesses would leverage telecom solutions that can accommodate innovative capabilities in the future. For this, they need to be built with inherent support for AI, ML, IoT, big data analytics, etc. This would allow businesses to build newer customer service innovations by leveraging the underlying telecom framework.

AI-powered customer interactions in the form of chatbots, fraud detection with AI, etc., are just some of the possibilities they can explore.

Wrapping Up

Telecom product development initiatives cannot be judged as a simple endeavor anymore. They hold strategic importance in pushing businesses to achieve better ROI from their digital investments. As such, selecting a solution would require end-to-end analysis of possibilities and potential it can unlock for a business.

Implementing a trusted communication solution for your business is vital, given that critical customer aspects like fraud prevention are on the line. This is where Globe Teleservices can make a huge difference. Our range of trusted solutions has been built to incorporate the latest market trends and innovations. They can undoubtedly propel your digital channels to new heights. Get in touch with us to know more.

Fueling Telecom’s Success with Private Wireless Networks (Trends, Opportunities, & Challenges in 2023)

Private networks continue to grow in adoption and popularity around the globe. In fact, the research firm Analysys Mason has predicted that the number of private wireless networks, including 5G and LTE, will grow to over 20,000 by 2026. They also expect that enterprises will spend around $5 billion on these networks.

While stressing the reasons for this growth, Ashutosh Agrawal, CMD at Globe Teleservices, explains that much of the “impetus seems to be coming from expectations of the imminent arrival of 5G.” He further adds that “there are also many application scenarios opening up across smart manufacturing, smart cities, automated supply chains, and so on.” Since private wireless networks can provide the requisite low latency, high speed, and high availability to accommodate such applications, they’re gaining utter prominence.

So, the question transpires – What opportunity do private wireless networks offer to telecom companies, and what challenges must they overcome? Let’s discuss.

Private Wireless Networks – Latest trends in 2023

In 2022, telecom operators added around 455 million 5G connections. Globally, wireless 5G connections grew by 76% in 2022 to reach 1.05 billion.

There’s no doubt that the spread of 5G technology has been the driving force for private wireless networks. Additionally, enterprises are now relying more on advanced data analytics, which requires a robust wireless network to handle the massive volumes of data.

Considering all these facets, here are some trends to look forward to:

The telecom industry isn’t a lot different when it comes to the need to deliver excellent CX. A study revealed that 70% of customers consider customer experience as a pivotal factor in choosing a telecoms provider. This emphasizes the telecom sector’s urgent need to prioritize investments in customer experience and put it at the center of the business strategy.

To embrace the future, telcos must undertake comprehensive transformations that place customers at the core of their operations.

The migration of private networks from 4G to 5G bandwidth
The adoption of full production deployment for both 4G/LTE and 5G applications and infrastructure
The growth of private networks for public venues, including hotels, airports, and stadiums
The integration or convergence of private 4G/5G networks with Wi-Fi-driven enterprises

Private Wireless Networks – How Telecom Operators Can Leverage the Opportunity

Ashutosh states that telecom companies have the “opportunity to monetize their infrastructure while building deeper engagements with super-user enterprises.” For instance, private wireless networks can bring the next-level connectivity for challenging industrial sites. Industrial firms can harness the power of technological interventions like digital twins, robotics, artificial intelligence, and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

In particular, the fast-growing IIoT ecosystem on private wireless networks is creating new opportunities for communication service providers (CSPs) and utility companies. For example, connected smart grids on 4G- and 5G-enabled networks can deliver consistent service to millions of customers.

That said, here are some of the possible use cases or opportunities for telecom companies:

Manufacturing: Private wireless networks can help create smart factories where real-time data insights can drive reliability and efficiency.
Education: These networks can enable students and teachers to interact remotely from a “virtual” classroom.
Supply Chain: 5G-based private wireless network, along with IoT technology, can automate the factory, warehouse, and transportation environment.
Smart City: A private wireless network in smart cities offers multiple benefits over public networks, including better security, flexibility, and infrastructure control.

A future-ready private wireless network requires enterprises to connect every device, sensor, and user. With complete data consolidation, private networks can augment the business value of data through analytics.

Challenges in Private Wireless Networks

Despite the benefits and opportunities, private wireless networks have their share of implementation challenges. Ashutosh outlines that telecom operators need to develop capabilities for “more flexible infrastructure and management.” Additionally, they need technical skills in:

Managing Agile deployments
Network integration
Delivering effective customer support
Managing and monitoring private networks

As wireless connectivity continues to grow, enterprise users expect it to be always up and running. The reality is much different. Wireless networks need to function optimally in facilities with high disturbance – for example, factories and mining sites. Unreliable connections can severely disrupt business operations, causing productivity-related issues.

Other challenges associated with a private wireless network include extreme weather conditions and bandwidth overload. Companies also face the challenge of providing fast and consistent network coverage over large areas, requiring a greater number of Wi-Fi access points.

High costs are also a significant challenge for enterprises implementing a private 5G network. These networks incur a substantial upfront cost for the infrastructure, maintenance, and operations. Enterprises need to invest in radio equipment, network accessories, and the backend infrastructure. Due to the high costs, private networks are out of the reach of smaller enterprises.

Another significant obstacle is to integrate the private network with the existing infrastructure and legacy systems. This means integrating the network with the existing applications, databases, and systems. Private 5G networks must also integrate with public networks, IoT devices, and Wi-Fi connections.

The Significant Role of Data Analytics in Private Wireless Networks

Data analytics is integral to the private wireless network space. This is understandable since telecom providers constantly need to improve their service delivery and infrastructure management capabilities.

Private wireless networks depend on data analytics to collect data from various network connections.

The analytics capabilities provide valuable insights into network operations and are useful across use cases, including the following:

Computing and predicting network load levels
Predicting the service experience for an application or user group
Predicting network load analytics for a specific network function
Measuring congestion information for a specific location

The data analytics function works in favor of telecom companies, as they leverage massive market opportunities associated with private wireless networks.

Cash in on these business opportunities with Globe Teleservices. We enable telecom service providers to manage their deployments and integrations. Want to know more? Get in touch with us today!

The Security Imperative for Telcos Providing Enterprise Solutions

In the pursuit of digital transformation, there is a growing industry demand for enterprise solutions and services from the telecom sector. In the “new” post-COVID economy, existing enterprise solutions do not meet the changing market demands. And mobile apps like Facetime enable innovative communication capabilities, thus impacting the “traditional” telecom industry.

Hence, we are seeing more telecom companies offering enterprise solutions in the form of managed services, storage solutions, and small business services. The latest reports estimate that the telecom enterprise services market is expected to reach $237 billion by 2025.

With the continuous growth of 5G services and IoT connectivity, the telecom infrastructure and services could be targeted by hackers. A successful breach can seriously impact internet connectivity and compromise sensitive information.

In the face of cybersecurity challenges, communication service providers (CSPs) are looking at security-related services as an opportunity for revenue growth. In fact, for CSPs, the revenue for security services grew by a healthy 20% in 2020.

That being so, what are the major security challenges that telecom companies must address, and how? Let’s discuss.

Security Challenges in the Telecom Sector

For major economies, the telecom sector is often the “gateway” for cyberattacks. The growing use of telecom networks and sensitive information is highly attractive to cybercriminals. As online threats grow more complex, the telecom industry must develop higher resiliency against external and internal threats.

Here are some of the leading security challenges in the telecom industry:

1. IoT Security Threats

With over 16 billion connected devices, Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks create more entry points for smart hackers. According to recent reports, security cameras in home networks are the most vulnerable IoT devices, followed by smart hubs like Amazon Alexa.

2. Insider Threats

In the post-pandemic environment, a good portion of the organizational workforce is operating from remote locations. This has increased the number of unsecured networks. The challenge is that most employees are unable to detect insider threats.

Additionally, most user applications do not implement security measures like data encryption. Cloud-powered authentication (including biometric security) can protect user data from insider threats.

3. External Cyberattacks

Cyberattacks like DDoS and DNS attacks continue to grow each year. In 2018, telecom companies were the target of nearly 65% of DDoS attacks. Going by global estimates, DNS attacks exposed 79% of business enterprises in 2020. Additionally, reports state that the telecommunication sector was the most targeted industry for DDoS attacks in the first half of 2021. Recent ransomware incidents have been large and wide ranging in scope.

Telecom companies continue to use dated network protocols like SS7 (Signalling system 7), which make their networks vulnerable to external cyberattacks. The good part is that the majority of telecom companies have implemented security measures for SS7 attacks.

Besides these security challenges, telecom companies must address third-party risks arising from external parties like vendors, partners, hosting companies, and contractors. Attackers can access telecom infrastructures using third-party tools as the “backdoor.”

How can Telecom companies meet these security expectations? Let’s discuss it next.

How Telecom Companies Can Meet Security-Related Expectations

With millions of global customers, the telecom industry is probably the largest collector of customer data, including financial and personal information. Additionally, telecom companies are required to protect sensitive data under various regulations like GDPR (in the EU) and APPI (in Japan). Any compliance failure can result in heavy penalties and loss of business trust.

To fulfil their increasing security-related expectations, telecom companies can consider the following actions:

Protecting Sensitive Data

As discussed previously, the human factor is responsible for most of the insider threats. Using data loss prevention (DLP) solutions, telecom companies can limit human involvement and damage. Effectively, DLP solutions directly protect sensitive data. These solutions can monitor files with sensitive information and limit any data transfer.

Cross-Platform Security

Security solutions mostly focus on a particular operating system or platform. However, the reality is that any IT infrastructure in any telecom company comprises a mix of operating systems and platforms.

Cross-platform security solutions provide all-around protection across multiple operating systems and platforms. With cross-platform security, telecom companies can protect sensitive data stored in all IT environments.

Additionally, telecom service providers can implement a holistic approach to security across the following four key areas:

Telecom standardization process consists of secure protocols, storage, and algorithms.
Product development process includes securing the hardware & software components, development process, software updates, and version control.
Deployment process includes a secure network design, security parameter configuration, and hardening measures.
Operations process consists of securing operational procedures and monitoring the security performance, vulnerabilities, and external attacks.

Conclusion

As more telecom companies provide enterprise solutions, they must integrate the security aspect. However, there is no quick fix to safeguard applications and sensitive data from external threats. Telecom companies must go beyond basic measures like firewalls and anti-malware tools to address their security needs.

At Globe Teleservices, we are partnering with a host of telecom companies and empowering them to meet their security requirements.

We can help you achieve optimum efficiency. Reach out to us with your business needs.

Is It Time For The Next-Gen Option To OTP?

Two-factor authentication is now a staple in the business world when it comes to validating customer communications. Allowing businesses to verify user identity through two or more authentication mechanisms, the method has been helping in adding an extra layer of protection to any sign-in process and protecting the business against breaches due to lost or stolen credentials.

While receiving a code or OTP on a registered mobile device for one login or transaction has been one of the most popular authentication mechanisms, it is now time for the next-gen option to OTP: Flash Call!

What are the challenges associated with OTP?

When users try to log into an app or try to make a banking transaction, OTP has been the go-to choice for secure authentication. According to reports, SMS-based authentication revenue will reach$39 billion globally in 2022, representing 5% of total operator-billed revenue.

Although OTPs help adds an additional layer of security, they bring with them their own set of challenges. For instance,

OTPs are known to be inconvenient and not very user-friendly. Users who aren’t very tech-savvy often find the OTP process confusing, unnecessary, or even cumbersome.
OTPs demand a reliable cell phone signal as well as sufficient battery life, which when not guaranteed, can result in delivery failures.
Many times, due to poor network, users fail to receive the OTP or receive it very late, requiring them to reinitiate the authentication process all over again – causing a high level of frustration, especially with banking transactions.
Some OTPs that are sent to the mailbox also tend to be delayed or land in the spam folder, which again leads to lost access.
For apps or transactions that make use of 3rd party messaging providers, users are also likely to incur a per-text charge to access their OTP and go ahead with the authentication process.
When using a mobile application that initiates an OTP process, toggling between the app window and the SMS window isn’t always everyone’s cup of tea; there is also the possibility of the wrong code being entered by the user, which requires users to start over again.
Users who need to authenticate a login while travelling abroad often do not receive an OTP because they do not have the international roaming facility enabled on their device.
For users whose OTP device is lost or stolen, multiple login attempts by bad actors can permanently lock them out of their accounts.

That apart, SMS is also the target of fraud and prone to security issues created by routing through questionable providers and grey routes.

What is Flash Call?

As the latest method for two-factor authentication, Flash Call reduces the widespread dependency on OTP, while helping overcome issues about inconvenience, data security, and lack of user-friendliness. It uses voice – instead of messaging – for authentication and is a far more customer-centric and cost-efficient solution to authenticate users, helping verify a user’s identity – without involving an SMS code. Since it involves no user interaction, Flash Call has the potential to disrupt the highly established A2P SMS market.

For instance, the global messaging app WhatsApp is reportedly working on integrating Flash Call as an alternative to OTP. Instead of making users enter a one-time, 6-digit code that they receive by SMS, the new Flash Call feature will allow WhatsApp to directly make a call to their device and verify the phone number – without users having to take any action. Such authentication will not overcome all the drawbacks of OTP; it will also pave the way for quicker verification and improved customer satisfaction.

How does it help businesses?

Flash Calling authentication is expected to near 128 billion calls globally by 2026; here’s how the new mechanism can aid businesses:

Accelerate the authentication process: Unlike the time-consuming OTP process where users have to open their SMS application to check for the OTP and enter it to authenticate themselves, Flash Call automates this verification process – without users having to do anything. As an automatic call is made – and then rejected – and the last four digits are automatically inserted, the device is instantly verified – thus accelerating the authentication process.
Offer a richer user experience: Flash Call allows businesses to have a greater ability to customize the user interface, the overall user experience is richer and more engaging. Since users no longer have to go back and forth between apps, there is a considerable increase in user satisfaction, which, in the long run, can also lead to better loyalty and retention.
Improve conversion rates: Flash Call is also a great way to improve conversion rates. Since users are no longer distracted by receiving and entering one-time passwords, businesses can pave the way for automatic verification and ensure quicker user signup – which can result in improved conversion rates in the long run.
Enable better security: Flash Calls are also known to more secure and amenable to privacy. Since the mechanism cannot be intercepted or terminated by fraudsters, it results in a higher level of security. At the same time, for apps or transactions that are used across multiple devices, Flash Call will make it easier and safer for users to log in to each device separately.
Reduce operational costs: Businesses today end up spending way too much money running their business for activities that span marketing, online advertising, analytics, and more. Common 2-factor authentication mechanisms like OTP only add to these costs, especially in countries where operators charge high rates for SMS and phone calls. Flash Call is a great alternative to the expensive OTP, allowing businesses to save a considerable sum on the authentication process.

As a new technology that can be used to authenticate users, Flash Call is a great alternative to the traditional, costly, and ineffective OTP authentication method. Not only does it enable quicker and more efficient authentication; it also aids in improving the end-user experience through automated verification. Given the numerous benefits it offers over OTP, Flash Call might just become a hot favourite for commerce, payments, and telecom companies. When that happens, let us show you how a powerful new alternative to OTP could work!

5 “New-Age” Digital Solutions that Could Occupy the Thoughts of Telecom Leaders

The digital revolution, driven by high-speed internet connectivity and a plethora of software products and services has become the backbone of social, economic, and technological prosperity today. Communication systems are evolving. As the technology landscape matures and provides more robust solutions to help enterprises and businesses navigate a complex, dynamic, and competitive business world, new and creative business models, products, and services are emerging to fulfil consumer demands.

The telecom sector has a pivotal role to play in this dynamic new age.
Here is a look at five new-age digital solutions that telecom leaders should care about

CPaaS and telecom

The CPaaS market has been on an incremental and steady rise. The demand for cloud communications expanded use cases and prompted new suppliers to enter the market. CPaaS, or Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS), allows organizations to cherry-pick real-time communications features, such as voice, video, and messaging, and embed them into business apps and services. This delivery model allows organizations to customize their communication stack and allows employees to communicate with each other and with customers on a platform and device they want.

CPaaS is cloud-based and software-driven and allows application developers and product owners to tap into and leverage digital and mobile features without having to build or locate any of the expensive physical network infrastructures.

While API providers and network owners are riding the CPaaS wave, it is time for telecom providers to identify how to cash in as well. Telecom providers often do not partner with CPaaS developers since they offer few APIs. The process infrastructure also tends to increase the time-to-market.

However, telecom leaders have the opportunity to get a share of the CPaaS pie since they have access to mass telephony. The cost and routing control, the database of phone numbers, and SIP or traditional switch infrastructure can be put to use to deliver a value proposition for CPaaS.

That apart, telecom companies can extend their services to a wider range of sectors such as entertainment, gaming, fintech, social media, etc. to advance their projects that blend video, voice, text, data analysis, and interactive communications and help deliver better feature-rich services.

Forecasts estimate that there will be more than 50 billion connected IoT devices in use across the globe by 2030. The greatest advantage that the telecom companies have is that of the infrastructure that exists with mobile phone towers and internet cables infrastructure serving the groundwork for creating new solutions and services based on 5G and IoT.

The IoT market is also expected to reach $381.16 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 24% as IoT use cases and industry adoption continues to increase rapidly. Apart from the use of IoT in home automation where the role of the telecom providers becomes that of providing exceptional mobile and network connectivity, there are significant opportunities for telecom companies to leverage in industries such as manufacturing, security, agriculture, logistics, smart cities, etc. that run on IoT.

Especially as 5G arrives, there will be a need for IoT specialists to help telecom companies implement the technology into existing infrastructure and business processes. Some telecom companies might need to build their own IoT platforms that aid the development of custom products and services to meet customer needs.

Telecom can not only help organizations adopt IoT to drive better outcomes but can develop IoT-linked products and services. IoT connectivity services and data storage and management are the usual suspects of where telecom providers come into the picture. Telcos can also provide better data and analytics from IoT-generated data and help businesses extract valuable insights from raw metrics.

Telecom leaders can drive real-time asset monitoring by employing extended communications networks in conjunction with cloud computing to collect signals from embedded devices and deliver them to the industry-tailored applications.

By adding IoT to their offering mix, telecom leaders can increase revenues by offering IoT services and solutions, retaining clients, and attracting new ones.

Edge Computing

Edge computing is gradually becoming a mainstay in the digital solutions toolbox especially as 5G explodes onto the scene. Analysts reveal that almost 75% of enterprise-generated data is expected to be created and processed outside the cloud or the traditional data centre by 2025. Most cloud computing giants such as AWS and Google are not ready for operating in massively distributed and remote edge environments.

The need to run edge computing at a massively distributed scale and the increasing reliance on the cloud to enable remote/hybrid work has accelerated the race to 5G adoption. With edge computing coming into the picture, telecom leaders have a greater chance for market dominance. This is because the hyperscale data centre advantage demonstrated by public cloud providers becomes irrelevant at the edge even though the uniform software stack advantage persists.

With 5G, organizations can distribute workloads to run at the Edge and reshape cloud computing and user experiences. 5G offers increased distribution, greater network speed and reliability, and the capability to provide new experiences because of reduced latency. These experiences will be powered by applications running on the network edge in contrast to running in the cloud.

For telcos, this means accelerating their move from a hardware-driven appliance model into a software-defined architecture and developing the capabilities and taking advantage of open-source technologies like Kubernetes as a potential foundation for 5G deployment. Delivering higher performance, lower latency, distributed scale, and stringent SLAs will become essential for telecoms as 5G and Edge become the next cloud disrupters.

Rich Communication Service (RCS)

RCS or Rich Communication Service is now emerging as the successor of SMS services. RCS is a feature-rich messaging service that allows organizations to create richer conversations with their customers. RCS delivers the eye-catching function of OOT applications and also leverages the unbeatable reach of SMS.

WhileRCS is not going to replace OTT applications, native messaging based on RCS is the next evolution of operator-led SMS and will play a big role in the new messaging environment. Customers are also ready to embrace RCS with some major brands already leveraging RCS heavily.

Telecom leaders have to work towards providing fully interoperable, RCS-based cross-operator advanced messaging platforms and develop the right partnerships with aggregators, and connectivity service providers to ride the RCS boom.

AR and VR

AR and VR are attracting a lot of attention today as these technologies are in the next stage of delivering new value propositions. They are now moving out of the realm of gaming and finding real-world applications across industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, worker safety, and compliance, aviation, oil, and gas, etc.

Telecom providers can dip their toes in the AR and VR pool since they are an essential part of the ecosystem. They help with the discovery and delivery segment and help subscribers find differentiated AR experiences.

While telecom companies do not stand great monetization opportunities directly from AR presently, they can leverage AR to drive better operational excellence with improved network inspection/maintenance, repairs, inventory management, workforce training, customer service, etc. using AR-based remote assistance.

Interestingly, the rise of digital solutions and the pursuant push towards digital transformation also demands a convergence between IT and telecom. Whether it is IoT, CPaaS, Edge computing, RCS, or the use of immersive technologies such as AR and VR, the telecom sector has a role to play as the enabler of everything.