A Government Investment Strategy Blueprint

At this challenging time, the role of the Telco has never been so important. They are key to retaining any semblance of normalcy in a COVID affected social and enterprise setting. More importantly, they are a key actor that will be crucial in enabling nations to manage the transition out of COVID-19 related stagnation but also in providing a resilient national infrastructure and stimulate GDP growth. There are numerous strategies that governments can utilize to invest in stimulating growth by strengthening the Telco position. This paper outlines some of those available levers.

As pay TV and OTT service providers battle to gain market share, they are investing heavily in premium content, advanced equipment, and technologies that support low latency and offer a better user experience. Despite efforts to maintain and gain subscribers, service providers are increasingly challenged by piracy and illegal content streaming. With a number of ways to illegally view video content, service providers are unfortunately poised to lose millions of subscribers each year, as well as billions of dollars in potential revenue.

It is no surprise that the COVID-19 outbreak has led to panic buying of items such as toilet paper and sanitizing supplies. However, this buying behavior has led to a massive need for trucks to help restock stores, shrinking the capacity available for other products. The result is a historically tight trucking market that has dropped 20% in volume in just the last two weeks.

5G and Cloud-Native networking Market Overview

Based on findings from  a recently commissioned Cloud-Native Networking for a 5G Era report, Communications Service Providers (CSPs) are seeking to transform their network infrastructure, automate operational processes, and transform internal mindsets to capture new growth. The transformation is being driven, in part, by a growth of user data demand, a massive increase in connected devices, an overly complex network, and new Business-to-Business (B2B) revenue growth increasingly tied to 5G adoption. A question of significance for CSPs is how to embed a degree of agility in networks and scale up the emerging enterprise use cases in a way that is sufficiently impactful and not disruptive. This is particularly important for new 5G-centric use cases (e.g., network slicing and 5G private networks) that will almost certainly consist of network elements and services that traverse different technology domains.

The worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 has kept consumers at home in recent weeks and turned the retail industry upside-down. Public health awareness has motivated shoppers (primarily of food and essentials) to keep their outings brief and contact-free. Once our daily lives and routines re-enter a state of normalcy, the effects of the pandemic could precipitate a greater demand for retail stores with no workers, but to date, the unmanned store has not caught on.

The 5G Devices Market Landscape

The mobile industry’s move to 5G has begun in earnest with expectations that more than 150 million 5G smartphones will be sold this year, irrespective of the impact caused by the coronavirus outbreak. This growth can only be reached if it is underpinned by the latest requisite technology, namely chipsets and modems from the major suppliers, which will power these flagship devices.

While 5G has hit the ground running with telco companies and consumers, and smart transportation prepares for its arrival, its link to edge computing will be one to watch over the next decade. 5G in manufacturing will grow from its current annual revenue of under $1 million to a near $11 billion technology by 2030.

Oftentimes with the introduction of a new technology, efforts in hardware and software development focus on experimentation and pushing the envelope, rather than the actual experience for new users. Augmented Reality (AR) is no different, where efforts over the past few years have mostly centered around piloting and experimenting with head-mounted and mobile-based AR.

As cloud suppliers continue to grow their footprint in the IoT value chain, their investments in data and analytics services are accelerating. Based on the review of cloud vendor offerings, recent acquisitions, and competitive outlook, ABI Research forecasts that cloud suppliers will grow their share of IoT data and analytics management revenues from US$6 billion in 2019 to US$56 billion in 2026.