Charting the Telecoms Business Over the Next Ten Years
SINGAPORE, Jan. 18 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- For
the telecoms industry, the last few decades have seen a steep
acceleration in the pace of change, technology maturity and
business adoption of mission critical communication
solutions. The Internet matured and quickly revolutionised
the way people live and work, while copper voice networks gave way
to converged optical fibre networks carrying voice and data at
ever-faster speeds. With Ethernet now becoming a utility,
social networking changing the dynamic of how people communicate
and converged communications solutions transforming the way global
organisations operate - network service providers find themselves
at the cusp of a brave new world. Green priorities, anywhere /
anytime communications and embedded intelligence just adds to the
complexity for providers who are expected to deliver services.
Intelligent cities are emerging, seamless collaboration across the
globe is a reality and technological development - once again -
seems to be restrained only by the limits of imagination.
"The next ten years has a lot to live up to,
but we at Cable&Wireless believe that the 'teens' will be every
bit as exciting as the preceding decade," said Alex Connors, Head
of Product Management, Cable&Wireless Worldwide.
Some of the key trends that
Cable&Wireless believes will shape the way forward for our
industry are:
#1: GENERATION 'Y' COMMUNICATIONS
Traditionally businesses have led the way in
communications innovation. They have had the requirement for
leading edge communications and the cash to pay for it. Over
the next ten years this will no longer be the case and we will
increasingly see businesses follow where the consumer market
leads.
The next generation of office workers already
see many of the tools we use on a daily basis as obsolete.
Email is already a thing of the past for them as they communicate
through consumer-facing multiple social networking sites and
instant messaging platforms and embrace concepts such as presence
(indicating the availability of people on a network) almost
instinctively. As this generation moves into the workplace
they will demand this multi-channel approach to communication to be
carried with them. For businesses that embrace this, we have
little doubt that they will see an increase in productivity and
collaboration.
The online identity of an employee will
become increasingly important. Individuals can map their
social networks to a greater level of granularity than ever before
and integral to this is having a strong online identity which
includes communication channels such as phone numbers, web
addresses, Facebook pages and instant messaging profiles.
They will gain full control over their online identities and bring
these with them to the workplace.
As Generation Y employees tend to move jobs
more frequently than their predecessors, they will require a fully
portable communications profile that they can take with them when
they move. Businesses will no longer provide email addresses
and phone numbers to their employees but will instead co-opt their
employees' existing profiles and overlay the company's branding for
the time the individual is with them. These communication channels
will be location independent and device independent, they will be
wherever the employee is and they will be carried to whichever
technology is in use at the time, be that a phone handset or a soft
client on a laptop. Social media and instant messaging
platforms will evolve into an online business environment where
multiple users can seamlessly communicate and collaborate across a
variety of media, increasing productivity and speeding up the
completion of projects.
#2: THE OFFICE OF 2010
Over the next ten years the concept of an
office will become increasingly irrelevant. The devices
carried by an individual will all be dual purpose - meaning that
they will serve for both consumer and corporate purposes as
required. Devices such as the iPhone and the BlackBerry
smartphones have already started this trend, but we will see this
grow exponentially over the decade. Laptops, for instance,
will become much lighter as hard-drives are replaced by chips which
can route to the corporate or consumer Cloud as desired by the
user.
Workers already have the ability to work from
virtually any location. This ability will be extended over
the decade and the performance of remote networking will increase
as 4G mobile networks become commonplace, allowing employees to
access high-speed broadband wirelessly and anywhere. Fixed
Mobile Convergence will reach tipping point and we will see the end
of the desk phone within the first five years of the decade,
allowing them to be contacted via one number, regardless of
location.
This is not to say that the office will
disappear altogether. The face-to-face contact that an office
provides encourages collaboration and is essential for building a
cohesive company culture. What will happen is that greater
flexibility and choice will enter the workplace and the lines
between home and office will become further blurred, depending on
individual preference and business requirements.
The way that businesses consume broadband
within the office (defined as the network of employees, wherever
they may be) will also change dramatically. In developed
regions, broadband will become a commodity and will plummet in
price. Businesses will be able to buy huge amounts of
capacity and bandwidth, allowing them to support feature rich
applications such as video, which will become a key application for
the next ten years. Developing markets will see broadband
offered on an on-demand basis. This will allow them to
request additional broadband resource for peak times; ensuring
business operations are at their most effective when they are most
needed. This flex-up and flex-down approach will provide
businesses with a uniquely tailored broadband environment.
#3: TRUSTED PARTNERS
The result of this change is that
relationships between businesses and telecoms operators will become
more important. With a wider variety of communications
services layered across the network and offered over the Cloud,
businesses will need to trust their communications providers in a
way never seen before. It is up to the telecoms industry to
ensure that they are even more reliable and secure than today
operators that manage to do this successfully will prosper in the
new telecoms landscape.
About Cable&Wireless
Cable and Wireless plc is one of the world's
leading international communications companies. It operates through
two standalone business units - Cable&Wireless Worldwide and
CWI.
The Worldwide business (formerly Europe, Asia
& US) specialises in offering high quality communications
services such as IP, data, voice and hosting to large enterprise,
reseller and carrier customers. It operates globally, with core
markets in UK, Asia and EMEA, and provides connectivity in 153
countries.
CWI is an owner and operator of leading
regional telecoms businesses. Headquartered in London, it operates
businesses through four regional operations the Caribbean, Panama,
Macau and Monaco & Islands delivering world class service and
efficiency. CWI is a full-service telecommunications provider
offering mobile, broadband, and domestic and international fixed
line services, as well as enterprise and managed service
solutions.
Cable&Wireless' global IP trunking
solution extends across 153 countries, providing voice traffic over
a data network with a lot more speed and efficiency and at a lower
cost for our customers. What Cable&Wireless strives to do is
work with our customers to help them put in place a capability
roadmap that allows them to easily integrate and add solutions as
their business and telecommunication needs grow - offering an
adaptable and easy to integrate infrastructure that grows with
them.
For more information about
Cable&Wireless, go to http://www.cw.com
Media Contact
Imelda Tan
Communications Specialist, Asia
Pacific
Cable&Wireless Worldwide
[email protected]
Tel: +65-6477-5821
SOURCE Cable&Wireless