INDUSTRY UNLOCKED
Telcos : The opportunity lies in the threat
Telecommunications are integrated into our daily lives , and we are dependent on them . Providing fresh insight , Heman Kassan , Chief Commercial Officer at Technodyn International ( IFS ), speaks to us about the African telcos industry , the security risks associated with 5G – and how these can be overcome – as well as the importance of managing both people and assets .
The telcos industry remains one of the most digitally disrupted markets as operators struggle to ensure their legacy / core services stay relevant while increasingly embracing digital technologies . But what is required is an appetite for innovation and teams who can cope with the diversification of their portfolios .
Over the past two years , the requirement for businesses to embrace a remote working model has seen a shift from traditional PBX systems to direct routing within collaboration systems ( like Teams ) to support an increasingly mobile workforce . While this has to an extent cannibalised the fixed-line market , it has also created an opportunity for telcos to grow their network capacity , bolstering this with additional fibre and in more advanced markets – increasing wireless deployments .
The bandwidth debate
Beyond just trying to ensure ongoing revenues and carving out new markets , telcos companies are facing several additional challenges .
Not least of which is an increasingly regulated market , growing demand for hosted private clouds , better bandwidth to support more effective onramps to public clouds and security threats .
Globally , governments are calling for more decentralised broadband infrastructure and are paving the way for a more competitive market . In the US , this means allowing states to manage broadband infrastructure ; in Europe , it means allowing for more competitive practices amongst private broadband providers ; and in Africa , it relates to loosening the grip that state-owned enterprises have on the connectivity market .
One can ' t exclude the power of mobile operators in this mix . In Africa , for example , there are more mobile data users than there are users of fixed lines or fibre . And in 2020 , mobile data operators were heralded as saviours by providing connectivity and access to information in remote and unreachable areas in light of the global pandemic .
As the cost of infrastructure comes down and technologies such as Software-Defined Networking become more pervasive – the costs of running a mobile network follow .
The proof of the importance of mobile operators / data is in the numbers . According to GSMA Intelligence , US $ 155 billion of economic value will be added to the Sub-Saharan Africa market by 2022 due to mobile technologies . In 2020 , transactions on mobile money platforms reached US $ 490 billion .
The intelligent Edge
Another critical driver moving the needle for telcos operators is Industry 4.0 or IoT . The promise of an interwoven fabric of intelligent Edge devices that provide insight and data from everything from a Smart City to an autonomous vehicle and robots in a factory – fuels extensive demand for networks that can support the speed at which these devices can deliver information to their parent systems .
Enter 5G . The one thing about the intelligent Edge is that it needs a speedy network to be intelligent . If we are to rely on the data from an IoT device to make up to the second decisions that impact the productivity of a business , we can ' t afford to have a high-latency network . 5G promises to reduce the speed and time it takes
www . intelligentcxo . com
37