INFRA QUEST

Networks need to be smart, agile, and pervasive as next-generation services grow and intelligence moves to the edge

- Deepak Kumar

The cheese has moved, and telecommunication is not going to be the same ever again. The business models centered around legacy voice and VAS have already crumbled and the digital paradigm is driving the markets in decisively new directions.

Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE)-driven IP-fication has blurred the boundaries between telco voice and OTT voice, and it’s only a strand of regulation, albeit for some good reasons, that causes the two to be held apart.

Yes, it is only a matter of time that all voice would be packetized and transported as data, though that also means voice would get a new avatar.

New Networks Needed

The new business models are all about and around data, which come in different forms, genres, and media. It could pertain to communications, entertainment, business, banking, healthcare, or even surveillance. It could be peer-to-peer, peer-to-network, or machine-to-machine, and so on. The new networks will be expected to support all of this, and more, at scales that only promise to grow.

This presents a plethora of new market opportunities for telcos, provided that they build both intelligence and agility into their existing and upcoming networks. Intelligence will amount to the networks being not only aware of the content and context but also be capable of prioritizing select traffic and allocating resources automatically. Agility should enable network elements to dynamically switch on or off and adjust routes depending on the applications and their workloads.