2020 and Beyond: The Next Frontier of Mobility

As a football fan, Barcelona always held a magnetic attraction for me. But there was something else that drew my attention as I drove into the city from the airport to attend the 2016 Mobile World Congress (MWC). As I passed through its cobblestone squares Barcelona is like any Mediterranean city until I look up and spot the curved plastic shields fastened to the lampposts at a height of about 30 feet, each with a few metal boxes inside. These boxes were actually computer systems, to measure noise, traffic, pollution, crowds, even the number of selfies posted from the street. They are the future of Barcelona, and in some sense they are the future for all of us too. Barcelona is perhaps the most wired city in Europe; the connected world that we so often talk about and demonstrated everywhere in MWC.

The next three days took me, a first time visitor to MWC, through a whirlwind tour of the shape of things to across industries. It was an incredible display of some of the most advanced technologies that was creating a Digital Life for all of us. I see very clear technology trends emerging in many areas.

5G is real

Till I went to MWC, I was not very clear about the state of 5G – whether it is real or exists just on paper? A demo of 5G prototype at Ericsson booth achieving 25 GBPS speed (compared to 1 or 2 GBPS in 4G) and sub millisecond latency clearly demonstrated that 5G is real. It was an eye opener for me. I believe that with the world moving towards connected vehicles, remote surgery, virtual reality; 5G would become critical in connecting the billions of devices that will create the Digital Life. Field trial during 2018 and commercial launch in 2020 looks highly plausible.

IoT waits its turn, still a hype

While I was super excited about 5G, I cannot say the same about IoT. Definitely there was a lot of buzz around IoT. Every company had something to showcase on IoT – be it operators, communication service providers, chip makers or automotive, life style, home solutions providers. While the buzz and excitement about IoT was not out of place, I am of the opinion that IoT will take time to mature as a technology and business model. 5G or Low Power Wide Area (LPWA), the major technologies that would enable IoT are still in its nascent stage and evolving. Security will become a huge issue in ubiquitous connected world of IoT – however not many companies are clear about security challenges and the solution. Most importantly, while IoT creates tremendous value for the consumers; the IoT offering providers are not clear how to claim value out of it. The IoT business model still does not make economic sense for the providers –a big issue according to me.

Cloud, maturing fast with stronger partnership ecosystem

Very interestingly, cloud on the other hand is maturing fast. There is a realization that not everyone can do everything in cloud – there is a need for partner ecosystem. It is quite evident by some of the Telco operators closing down their public cloud offering, not being able to compete with specialized public cloud providers. There were a number of new announcements around cloud technology alliance – for example Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Ericsson partnership. Ericsson also launched its OTT Cloud Connect (OCC) service to simplify collaboration between Telcos and multiple OTT providers via a cloud-based service that allows quick integration of OTT services with telco networks. Ericsson is also building an ecosystem of pre-integrated OTT providers and has teamed up with Google as one of its partners. The troika of operators, ICT service providers and cloud platform players is going to create a sustained partner ecosystem and business model around cloud spanning across network and IT.

Last but not the least, the hype of Virtual Reality
Images of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg walking into a hall full of people glued into Samsung Gear VR devices was in many ways the defining picture which captured this edition of MWC. Samsun, HTC. LG, Nokia all had VR offerings. The buzz was that VR would completely transform the gaming industry. I feel that VR when it becomes mainstream would have fantastic application in the learning services industry to create the truly immerse learning in virtual classrooms. This will also have very strong impact on remote healthcare, creating simulation scenarios in hazardous industries, etc. However, it will be some time before the hype becomes a reality.

So that’s it! 5G, Cloud, IoT and VR (Virtual Reality) dominated the event. While each of these trends was in various stages of maturity there were strong underlying layers of interdependence among these. For instance 5G would enable IOT and VR. VR and IOT in turn will generate colossal volumes of data which needed to be stored in powerful servers in the cloud for analytics. I will even stick my neck out and say this – in MWC 2017 security will become a very big topic and focus.

Also by the time we return to MWC 2017 most of these technologies would have moved closer towards business realities and we would have advanced well into the Digital Life. And in that journey forward, companies that will transform themselves to become the orchestrator or aggregator rather than just being a participator or enabler would claim enormous economic value.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are my personal point of view and do not in anyway represent that of the organization I work for.