To Connectivity and Beyond: Engineering the Future

Technologies that might once have been considered the realm of science fiction, will redefine how we live, work, and care for our planet.

How often do you use your smartphone?

Be it for work, for social reasons, or for entertainment, I’m sure lots of us would be reluctant to share our daily screen time.

Connectivity has transformed from a nice-to-have luxury to an absolute necessity, both for businesses and consumers. Whether it’s connecting with overseas relatives via FaceTime, leveraging private 5G networks to improve supply chain efficiency, or enabling expansive telemedical care, connectivity plays a vital role in bridging the different facets of our ever-expanding, digital world. It forms an integral part of the transition towards more intelligent and sustainable industries.?

What’s more, its capabilities are adapting and evolving at a startling pace. So, what’s next? Can we push the limits of connectivity even further? And how can the telecommunications industry tackle the quadruple challenge of reliability, affordability, consistency, and sustainability along the way?

Engineering is revolutionizing the way we connect and communicate, driving connectivity towards unprecedented heights. Let me explain how.

Connectivity everywhere and for everyone

Connectivity brings countless benefits. Consider for example how simple it is to organize a taxi nowadays: not only is booking easy, but online geolocation means you can see how far away it is and how long it will take to reach you.

However, while many individuals and communities thrive in the interconnected digital landscape, significant disparities persist. Not all communities have sufficient smartphone access to online public infrastructure and the services it enables, including remote learning, government services, and healthcare. Bridging this digital divide requires significant concerted effort to ensure that everyone can fully participate in and benefit from the opportunities afforded by connectivity.

The good news is that the technology to broaden public access to essential community and personal services is increasingly available and increasingly affordable. From Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations to high altitude platforms such as stratospheric balloons and airships, non-terrestrial networks (NTN) are transforming global connectivity. The results are far-reaching: these technologies help to extend coverage to remote and isolated places where terrestrial infrastructure may not be feasible nor cost-effective to deploy, thereby giving previously unconnected communities access to valuable online materials and resources. They provide new revenue and service opportunities to operators, enabling them to tap into the rural consumer market.

What’s more, NTNs can also contribute significantly to terrestrial sustainability efforts, including remote detection of fires, floods and other natural disasters, as well as contributing to efforts to mitigate climate change. For example, in 2023 Capgemini helped develop a solution for the European Space Agency (ESA). Working alongside a consortium of scientific and industry leaders, and led by GMV, Capgemini helped support the ESA in raising the global standard of emissions data quality by leveraging satellite observations to provide more precise, frequently updated information with improved spatial and temporal resolution.

Consume smarter. Consume less.

Energy consumption has always been a major consideration for service providers, given such high operating costs. And with no end in sight to the ongoing turbulence of energy prices, it is becoming an increasingly thorny issue, creating high costs now, and unpredictable expenditures in future months. Not to mention the significant environmental toll that is a direct result of energy consumption.

Project Bose is a perfect example of applying tech to tackle this. A joint project between Capgemini Engineering and Intel, Project Bose uses a data-driven approach to enable sustainable 5G networks, in a smarter way. It works by closely connecting Capgemini’s network AI framework with critical elements of a 5G network, using AI to understand and anticipate loads and usage patterns to configure them for minimal energy consumption. You can watch a short video about it here.

The result? Significant CO2 emission reductions and cost savings, without a negative impact on end users’ experiences. To put that into perspective – to date, the project has obtained an average of 18% energy savings in a lab environment resulting in around a 14% reduction in CO2 emissions.

Autonomous, intelligent networks

While not everyone may yet be able to benefit from connectivity, for those that can, the dial has shifted.

Seamless, uninterrupted connectivity is now the standard, and today, consumers expect nothing less. For instance, it’s frustrating for everyone when the latest TV hit keeps buffering, or when a Teams meeting cuts out.

Technological advancements over the last five years, such as 5G and superfast fiber broadband, have indeed improved the reach and quality of network services. But the growing number of devices connecting to a network – and exchanging ever-increasing volumes of data – has deepened the demand for and complexity of the telco network to new extremes. As a result, network management activities extend far beyond the reach of manual operations.

Autonomous networks are fast emerging as a solution to manage this growing complexity, while also chipping away at rising network operation costs. Designed to self-configure, self-optimize, and self-heal, these networks envision a future of connectivity that can handle huge workloads and require minimal human intervention.

Telcos everywhere are beginning to tap into the benefits: in fact, 84% of telcos have initiated some form of network autonomy. But there’s a desire to elevate this further, particularly by integrating AI capabilities.

On the journey towards fully autonomous networks, AI, ML, and Gen AI will provide a cornerstone in helping service providers to achieve Level-3 and above autonomous networks over the next two to five years. They hold the power to develop use cases such as complex event processing, dynamic bandwidth selection and path selection, network capacity planning, and network provisioning and optimization, all of which can speed up connectivity, lower costs, and make connections more reliable.

Looking ahead: hyper-connectivity

Everything we’ve considered so far – despite representing progress – is within touching distance: a not-so-far-away reality and in some instances well underway.

But making this future a reality will require significant innovations and advancements in connectivity and smart connected technologies. We’re talking about 1,000 times faster connectivity than what’s currently possible, data transfer speeds in terabytes per second, and latency so extremely low we can’t even conceive it.

At Capgemini we’re already looking to the future, transforming what was once inconceivable into a reality by exploring the new possibilities opened up by 6G. As a key lever of energy-efficient and data-driven ‘Intelligent Industry’, we? are focusing on developing new architecture frameworks to enable ultra-large coverage, AI native and sustainable 6G networks through our 6G Lab and research program with King’s College.

?

In summary

Looking ahead, technologies that might once have been considered the realm of science fiction, will redefine how we live, work, and care for our planet. The development of NTNs, the use of AI to make communications more energy efficient, the evolution of scalable autonomous networks, and the promise of hyperconnectivity are truly transformative, both separately and collectively.

It all starts with R&D and engineering, which takes advantage of emerging, cutting-edge technologies that are spearheading the next generation of connectivity – and thereby helping to redesign the future of business and how industries address challenges.

Click here for further information on the role of NTNs in 5G developments.