While most of the people are talking about the trends to be observed in the year 2017, telecommunication solution providing giants are mostly focusing on what they can bring or offer to the consumers by 2020.These enterprises are concentrating heavily on the consumers’ choices, their demands and their wishes. Every other telecom company is doing heavy research and survey study to understand the minds of people, planning new strategies and offering new, unique and crowd-pulling telecom schemes to move ahead of their competitors, beat them in the race and survive in the industry. With more and more companies coming into the scenario of the telecommunication industry, the industry is getting more saturated, ultimately making the competition stiffer.
It would be an old thing to say that the technological advances are revolving around the industry, and so the industry is evolving. The way we communicate today is entirely different than how people used to communicate decades ago. This transformation did not happen overnight, it took years of perseverance to make this happen. Even the normal calls through mobile phones are vanishing today, which used to be a craze a few years back. The world is getting more into the virtual world now. The use of app-based communication, online streaming communication tools through internet like WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook, IMO, Skype and others are increasing and it is what comprises of 80 percent of all message traffic and Skype alone holds for more than a third of all the international voice traffic that takes place in the world now. This is another major factor which is adding significant amount of trouble to the telecom carrier companies.
As per recent survey reports made by Global Mobile Consumer Survey (GMCS), the US consumers look at their mobile devices more than nine billion times a day making an increase in the aggregate by 13 percent compared to the last year’s statistics. With every year passing, the sale of smartphones is rising and the most amazing fact is that the highest growth was observed in the age group of 45 to 54 and also 55+ which was earlier lagging behind the younger consumers. Another trend which is observed this year is the growth in the sale and wearing of new wearable smart and fitness devices. The reports suggested that the penetration level of smartwatches have tripled from 2014 to 2016.
While observing the trends which is revolving now or to be seen soon in the market are as follows.
Virtualization of Communication Process
There was once a time when people were mostly interested in buying free or cheap priced software whereas they were ready to invest in hardware and the experts say that the main reason behind this was that the nature of software was more virtual than real. Slowly but steadily, people are getting into the total virtual space. They are not just accepting but adapting the virtualization of the telecom industry. The mentality of the people is changing today and it’s more about buying software that’s worthy and they are making less investment in the hardware now.
Integration of Content Service and Telecom Service Providers
In every enterprise, entrepreneurs are always trying to reduce their costs and increase their profits. And even in this industry, connectivity is becoming cheaper. Researchers are expecting that many telecom companies will be acquired by some of the major content companies and that’s what they fear for the telecom companies.
Security Issues of the Telecom Industry
As the numbers of telecom users are rising, the numbers of telecom service users are also rising and clearly the amount of data is rising. With the sudden surge in the amount of data, comes the concern for data breaches. As the previous year has seen a lot of data breaches, the security concerns are obviously rising in 2017. Technologists are trying their best to take some amazing steps to control this data breach. For any company, any of their data is very much critical and the current trend is moving up the ladder to make the network and data secure. Anything can be an example of this from WhatsApp encryption, internet surfing through internet or telephone call; it should be nothing but safe and secure.
Emergence of 5G Networks
The technology has still not been clearly defined and the technologists are undergoing several researches to improve the carrier and communication technology. The only motto behind this is to improve the speed, with greater efficiency and less latency. Many international telecommunication companies are currently working to achieve this and they are soon planning to launch these solutions in the market. Experts though suggest the consumers that they should not neglect the security and additional features while jumping on getting the 5G services though the companies offer.
The steep decline in the annual revenues every year has been observed by the researchers and this has left the telecom companies with minimal revenue growth and tightening margins. The carrier companies must focus in the modernizing operations through digitization, simplification of the operation processes and network upgrades and then build a strategic identity of themselves for both their present and future prospect.