© Copyright Nostre Net
The challenge as ever will be developing new business models and services to meet this opportunity. The good news is that the search for 5G use cases and returns has already prompted operators into action, and customers will prove more receptive to new ideas as they look to adapt to the realities of the post-COVID world.
Do you know that…Recently, we have seen an increasing buzz in the industry around 6G, also referred to as beyond 5G.
Be it the launch of Next G Alliance in Q4 2020 or of what China claimed to be the first compatible satellite, 6G is clearly on the radar of industry. Developments like China claiming domestic companies account for about 35 per cent of related patent applications and the establishment of vision group within the ITU-R to define key capabilities of 6G, are some of the contributors to propelling the industry to announce plans.
The U.S and Japan joined forces to invest $4.5 billion in R&D, testing and deployment of secure networks for the next generation of communications.
Germany’s government earmarked up to €700 million ($855 million) for 6G research by 2025. The initial investment of €200 million will be injected to create research hubs which will work towards preparing the next generation of communications by coordinating activities and working with other international bodies.
Huawei, at its global analyst conference, announced plans to launch 6G equipment in 2030. Reportedly, Huawei is also planning to launch two test satellites in July to explore the technology
The Next G alliance announced the formation of working groups and the launch of its technical program. The National 6G roadmap working group is the key group and will address the full lifecycle of commercialisation.
Where our figures show 5G connections accounted for only 4.21 per cent of global connections by the end of Q1 2021, the recent announcements and initiatives on 6G leave many people pondering if now is the right time for the clock to start moving or if the focus should remain on 5G.
We know commercial mobile 5G networks only saw the light of the day in 2019 and have a long way to go to reach their full potential, from exploring digital innovations enabled across various sectors to the deployment of pending standards from 3GPP Release 17.
More info: field service technician
Earlier fraud systems only used to describe unusual activities. The traditional fraud systems used to develop reports that showed traffic levels, changes in call duration and so on. And experts would determine what was really happening and find the root cause. With the development of big data techniques and statistical analysis, fraud systems have evolved into diagnostic and predictive analytics.
To prevent churn, data scientists are employing both real-time and predictive analytics to:
Combinevariables (e.g., calls made, minutes used, number of texts sent, average bill amount, the average return per user i.e.ARPU) to predict the likelihoodof change.
Know when a customer visits a competitor’s website changes his/her SIM or swaps devices.
Use sentiment analysis of social media to detect changes in opinion.
Target specific customer segments with personalized promotions based on historical behavior.
React to retains customers as soon as the change is noted.
Predictive models, clustering would be the ways to predict the prospective churners.
Using big data and python, I have developed the solution to find the upcoming network failure before it takes place.
In the past, telecom companies have handled this problem by putting caption data and developing tiered pricing models.
But now, using real-time and predictive analytics, companies analyze subscriber behavior and create individual network usage policies.
When the network goes down, every department (sales, marketing, customer service) can observe the effects, locate the customers affected, andimmediately implement efforts to address the issue.
When a customer suddenly abandons a shopping cart, customer service representatives can soothe concerns in a subsequent call, text, oremail.
More info: field engineer
Heading into 2021, telecommunications, media, and entertainment industry leaders should consider three key strategic opportunities both to recover from the COVID-19 crisis and to boldly position themselves to thrive in the future:Renewing the focus on customers’ needs by taking a more nuanced approach to customer engagement Converging and remixing entertainment experiences through new service offerings and entertainment bundles—and by adopting new strategies that can enable business agility
Repositioning to monetize advanced wireless networks through new products, services, and business models
It is important for M&E companies to understand consumer needs and behavior patterns in order to develop services that both attract and retain customers. They should understand the economic needs of consumers.
The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed severe economic constraints on millions of consumers: 39% of respondents to Deloitte’s COVID-19 digital media trends survey reported a decrease in their household income since the pandemic began. Consumers who lost income during the pandemic were more than twice as likely to cancel a streaming service because of cost, compared with those whose income was unchanged.
They also should understand consumer needs around content. As we enter 2021, original content will almost certainly remain the No. 1 factor driving consumer adoption and cancellation of streaming services. The challenge then becomes how to retain those customers before they seek other streaming options. As a result, the next level of focus should be on consumer experience: How do I attract you with original content, but then retain you by knowing more about you as a customer?
The churn rate among over-the-top services in the United States rose from 35% in Q1 2019 to 41% in Q1 2020.The implications for M&E companies are clear: Customers want tailored options in terms of content and pricing. Therefore, while the availability of original content is typically critical for attracting customers, a broad content library and tiered pricing (including free, ad-supported offerings) are increasingly essential for retaining them.
More info: cloud engineer
5G will act as a medium to drive integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) into the network edge. The next-generation wireless networks will leverage AI and ML to forecast end-user distribution, predict peak traffic, and enhance network capability. The ML algorithms will make it easier for telecom companies to implement network slicing and beamforming. AI and ML will create opportunities for telecom companies to boost network experience and curtail network cost through automation. AI-based communication will further lead to the development of smart cities by facilitating decision making based on real-time data.
Mobile Edge Computing
Many telecom companies have already launched projects to implement mobile edge computing to cater to the exponential growth of smartphones and IoT devices. Many tech analysts believe that mobile edge computing will transform the telecom industry in 2021 as a disruptive technology. The telecom companies will leverage edge computing to bring data storage and computing closer to the end-users’ devices. In addition to reducing latency, edge computing will speed up the processing of real-time data collected and transmitted through connected devices. Many telecom companies are expected to diverse resources to mobile edge computing from a public cloud to store data locally.
This is a time when, as the authorities deal with a lockdown, there needs to be an equal emphasis on providing for large numbers of people without the money for food and necessities, while the rest of us wait it out. Hard as it is, an MIT scholar writes that after the Spanish flu in 1918, cities that restricted public gatherings sooner and longer had fewer fatalities, and emerged with stronger economic growth.1 It is likely that costs and benefits vary with economic and social capacity, and we may have a harder time with it here. Going forward, government action to help provide relief, rehabilitate people and deal with loss needs to be well planned, including targeting aid to the urban and displaced poor.
As important now as to ensure the lockdown continues is to plan on how to revive productive activity and the economy, and restore public confidence. A systematic approach will likely yield better results.
More info: lead engineer
As a result of the structural changes in the telecommunications industry, the source of funds for investing in research has shifted from the demand side—telephone customers who paid for Bell System research via a tax on telephony usage—to the vendors of equipment, software, and chips, although the U.S. military (through DARPA, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force) continues to be a major source of investment in telecommunications research. Currently, end-user organizations and commercial intermediaries are investing very little in research (an exception is AT&T, which has maintained a vestige of Bell Labs but has cut that back substantially, due to dramatic reductions in traditional telecommunications revenues over the past 3 years, from a support level of close to $140 million in 2001 to a support level of below $60 million in 2004).
Today, for commercial technologies, most of the investment is made by supply-side equipment vendors and semiconductor and software companies. Service providers and equipment vendors primarily support research leading to near-term incremental additions to their own products and services, and are likely to keep the results of their short-term research programs proprietary in the interest of gaining competitive advantage.
Although demand-side entities are generally more likely to direct their research investments toward more fundamental and long-time-horizon opportunities, a major economic impediment to doing so is so-called free-riding. Since the goal of a demand-side entity is typically not to gain proprietary advantage, but to make innovative solutions available through the totality of its suppliers, demand-side investments in research usually benefit everybody, that is, all suppliers and other demand-side entities. Thus, companies or entities failing to invest in research can still benefit from the investments of others, and there is a temptation to gain a free ride on those investments—and a disincentive to invest in results that become largely a public good.
More info: rf engineer
Without an expanded investment in research, however, the nation’s position as a leader is at risk. Strong competition is emerging from Asian and European countries that are making substantial investments in telecommunications R&D.For many telecommunications products and services that are now commodities, the United States is at a competitive disadvantage compared with countries where the cost of doing business is lower. Continued U.S. strength in telecommunications, therefore, will require a focus on high-value innovation that is made possible only by a greater emphasis on research. Expansion of telecommunications research is also necessary to attract, train, and retain research talent.
Telecommunications research has yielded major benefits such as the Internet, radio frequency wireless communications, optical networks, and voice over Internet Protocol Nevertheless, research support has fallen off in recent years. Prior to the restructuring of the telecommunications industry in 1984, the Bell System’s research labs played a dominant role in long-term, fundamental telecommunications research for the United States. Post-restructuring, industrial support for such research has declined, become more short-term in scope, and become less stable. A diverse array of competing telecommunications firms— telephone, cable, Internet, and wireless—emerged, leaving most research to equipment vendors, which increasingly focused on short-term goals. Telecommunications research is increasingly being done at universities rather than by industry, and outside rather than inside the United States. In addition, the diversity of players in today’s telecommunications industry makes it difficult to design and deploy major, end-to-end innovations.
Federal funding of long-term research has not increased to cover the decline in industry support. No systematic efforts, such as took place for the semiconductor industry with SEMATECH, have emerged. Because the benefits of much telecommunications research cannot be appropriated by individual firms, therefore, public funding of such research appears necessary.
More info: cyber security engineer
U.S. critical infrastructure, national defense, and homeland security, which depend on having uninterrupted access to leading-edge telecommunications technology, are potentially threatened by the loss of a domestic telecommunications industry.
Without a continuing focus on telecommunications R&D, the United States will increasingly be forced to purchase telecommunications technology and services from foreign sources. Risks include (1) U.S. dependence on foreign sources of technology to meet critical defense needs; (2) loss of exclusive or early access to state-of-the-art communications technology; (3) loss of know-how to employ state-of-the-art technology; (4) opportunities for other nations to introduce security holes into equipment and networks; and (5) loss of technical capability for cyberdefense in such areas as cybersecurity, network assurance, and cryptography. Investment in telecommunications research yields major direct and indirect benefits.
U.S. telecommunications research has yielded tremendous direct and indirect returns.Notable payoffs from U.S. investment in telecommunications research and related areas in recent decades include the following: The Internet, which realized a new communications paradigm, introduced a new, highly flexible network architecture and protocols, and ultimately enabled myriad new applications and services;Radio-frequency communications technologies for cellular systems and wireless local area networks, which have enabled modern mobile voice and data communications;
Optical networks, which have revolutionized communications by providing extraordinary communications bandwidths at very low unit cost; and Voice over IP (VoIP), which provides voice communications with enhanced flexibility and efficiency and has provided opportunities for innovation in applications beyond those provided by the public switched network.
There are many promising avenues for telecommunications research, and renewed U.S. investment would yield major dividends, as indicated by the following possible results:
More info: computer engineering jobs
An implication of defining telecommunications broadly is that every layer involved in communication at a distance becomes, at least partially, part of the telecommunications industry. The broad range and large number of companies that contribute to the telecommunications industry are evident in the following list of examples: Networking service providers across the Internet and the PSTN, wireless carriers, and cable operators. Examples include AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and DirecTV.
Communications equipment suppliers that are the primary suppliers to service providers. Examples include Cisco, Lucent, and Motorola.Networking equipment suppliers selling products to end-user organizations and individuals. Examples include Cisco’s Linksys division and Hewlett-Packard (local area networking products).Semiconductor manufacturers, especially those supplying system-on-a-chip solutions for the telecommunications industry. Examples include Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and STMicroelectronics. Suppliers of operating systems that include a networking stack. Microsoft is an example.Software suppliers, especially those selling infrastructure and applications incorporating or based on real-time media. Examples include IBM, RealNetworks (streaming media), and BEA (application servers).
Utility or on-demand service providers selling real-time communications-oriented applications. Examples include AOL and Microsoft (instant messaging) and WebEx (online meetings).Consumer electronics suppliers with communications-oriented customer-premises equipment and handheld appliances. Examples include Motorola and Nokia (cell phones), Research in Motion (handheld e-mail appliances), Polycom (videoconferencing terminals), Microsoft and Sony (networked video games), and Panasonic (televisions).What is striking about this list is how broad and inclusive it is. Even though many of these firms do not specialize solely in telecommunications, it is now quite common for firms in the The societal importance of telecommunications is well accepted and broadly understood, reflected in its near-ubiquitous penetration and use. Noted below are some of the key areas of impact:
More info: how does 5g work