2017 has been an important and transformational year for business telecoms and the networking industry, but how will it look moving into 2018?
With faster speeds, better security and greater feature sets, 2018 will see many exciting advancements in an already productive telecom market.
Here are our predictions of the hot telecoms trends of 2018:
5G
As the development of 5G is already underway, 2018 will see it advance even further. Although it is not expected to be ready for use until at least 2020, businesses will be putting a huge focus on preparing for its launch within the coming months/years.
When it’s finally ready for public use, the introduction of 5G could have numerous applications in an extensive range of businesses.
It will increase tenfold the volume of data available to businesses and consumers alike, just in the same way that developments such as going from 2G to 3G increased the amount of data used across the economy.
Security – On High Priority
After the huge ‘WannaCry’ security scare that attacked over 100 countries across the globe in 2016, 2017 saw a massive focus on security and the prevention of data breaches. We expect that this will continue to be emphasised well into 2018 as more and more telecom companies are realising the increasing vulnerability of infrastructure linking networks to attacks.
Much like this year, we predict that 2018 will see network security will continue to be top priority to operators, as encryption will transition from a niche play to a more pervasive technology.
Over-The-Top and Value-Added Services
The constantly growing competition from over-the-top (OTT) players which offer apps and content streaming directly via the internet, will drive telecom companies and other service providers to partner with and become primary OTT solution providers in their own way to drive revenue, counterbalance the downward price pressures and build customer loyalty. This rise in operator-led OTT services will not only expand the market opportunities but also redirect a fraction of the global OTT spend back towards the network and service providers.
IoT – The Traffic Explosion
Another major trend that will impact telecommunications is the surge of connected devices. The Internet of Things will add billions if not trillions of new connected data sources globally in the coming years, starting in 2018.
The upswing of all of these devices will be an exorbitant growth in data volumes; quickly pushing through exabyte volumes to enter the world of zettabytes per year.
Spectrum’s range of telecoms solutions can help you to prepare for the ever-changing IT world.
Why not give your company the best Christmas present this year by giving Spectrum a call to see how we can help you?
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