Telecom trends—2024 and beyond [Reader Forum]

I have been in the Telecom industry since 2004 when I started in network engineering at Verizon, this year marks 20 years in the industry! I ‘grew up’ Telecom and have worked in wireline, wireless and places where they converge, I have seen lots of trends come and go over that time. I had the opportunity to sit down and reflect on what I see taking center-stage in 2024:

1. Telecom Cloud
2. Silicon Expansion
3. Network Traffic
4. Sustainability 
5. Artificial Intelligence 

1. Telecom Cloud: 

The shift toward cloud computing enables mobile operators to take advantage of networking resources in an efficient way, Telecom Cloud is expected to reach $125B by 2030. Multi-cloud brings access to the best-in-class capabilities needed to streamline innovation, create competitive advantage and build resilience for the future.

I see two key drivers enabling this trend:

1. Software-defined, cloud-based network modernization will be required to monetize new applications 
2. Data and network volume is growth that requires the expansion of a cloudified network

How can CSPs cash in on this trend?

1. Review public, private and hybrid cloud network strategies and opportunities
2. Create scalability by building cloud-based services that can be ramped up or down based on demand
3. Manage cloud complexity by investing in easy to deploy cloud network modernization 

2. Silicon Expansion: 

To meet the growing demand for mobile data and 5G services, mobile operators need to upgrade their networks with powerful and flexible equipment that can handle higher bandwidth and lower latency. They need chipsets that can process large amounts of data quickly and efficiently to allow them to scale. This is especially important for applications that involve real-time decision making, such as artificial intelligence and edge use cases such as autonomous driving, augmented reality, and video analytics.

How do CSPs keep up Silicon Expansion?

1. Participate in the telecom open ecosystem and learn from others how to choose and scale 
2. Understand the silicon within hardware to ensure it meets CSP specifications for workloads and sustainability 
3. Invest in platforms that are future-ready and can continue to evolve with the network so CSPs don’t need to replace entire servers when new chips become available 

3. Network Traffic:

Traffic over mobile and fixed access networks will rise sixfold by 2030. As network traffic increases, where the data is processed becomes more important. By 2030 on premise and cloud processing are expected to account for 70% of total enterprise traffic.

How do operators prepare for explosive network traffic growth?

1. Move to disaggregated cloud-based architectures so they can easily expand with network traffic growth
2. Deploy, scale and manage telecom networks at low cost
3. Implement NEBs compliant, purpose-built telecom hardware capable of handling edge workloads

4. Sustainability: 

This trend is “back”, it seems to wax and wane over the years but I believe this time it’s here to stay. A GSMA Intelligence survey indicates nearly 85% of telecoms operators worldwide have made net-zero commitments, this becomes a stellar 97% if including those with plans to. Furthermore, two thirds have committed to do so by 2040, well in advance of the generally accepted guidance of 2050.

How do CSPs ensure that they can meet these net-zero goals?

1. Automate moving workloads to the most efficient location; edge, core or cloud
2. Enable AI sleep states for equipment not in use to easily save on power
3. Upgrade and invest in energy efficient hardware that prioritizes device longevity 

5. Artificial Intelligence: 

With AI’s promising emergence in the telecom industry, seizing the opportunity to stay ahead of the curve is imperative. 95% of CSPs say that they are currently engaged with AI, and I suspect many will be/are engaged in Generative AI as well. 

How do you navigate and position your business for the growth of AI?

1. Optimize, predict and automate network performance and operations
2. Invest in upskilling the expertise required to operate and manage an AI enabled network
3. Work with enterprise customers to develop and monetize AI use cases at the edge

As you can probably tell, many of these trends (need to) co-exist. For example, I worked in central offices adding new fiber equipment, most of which replaced the copper equipment, but we simply never went and took it out because we were so focused on adding fiber customers. After a few years we realized we could save a lot of energy (and money) by simply unplugging the copper equipment that wasn’t in use. My job became to write SQLs to figure out what equipment was no longer supplying service (or had customers we could move to fiber) and have it unplugged. By just unplugging equipment, we saved 178M kWh and $18M over the equipment lifecycle, and that was just one state Imagine the worldwide impact of something simple like this and using AI as the vehicle to power (pun intended) this energy savings?!

Looking forward to an exciting year in Telecom and P.S. let’s tackle 5G enterprise use-cases before we start talking about 6G. 

References: 

• Telecom Cloud: Telecom Cloud Market Size, Share | Industry Forecast – 2030 (alliedmarketresearch.com)
• Chip Expansion: Samsung and AMD Collaborate To Advance Network Transformation With vRAN – Samsung Global Newsroom, Vodafone and partners shine light on new silicon photonic chips | TelecomTV, Ericsson strikes Cloud RAN agreement with AMD
• Network Traffic: Page 9-The next generation of operator sustainability: greener edge and open RAN (gsmaintelligence.com)
• Net-Zero Goals: Page 4-The next generation of operator sustainability: greener edge and open RAN (gsmaintelligence.com)
• Artificial Intelligence: Telco AI Deep Dive: NVIDIA on bringing AI into 5G RAN (rcrwireless.com) / Nvidia Archives – RCR Wireless News