The telecom industry has quickly evolved over the years (with much rapid growth in the last decade) from basic landlines to wireless communication and ultimately to the ever-growing Internet Telephony (VoIP).
Mobile communication has dominated the Telecom industry in the last decade. But it is clear that currently the market has saturated, communication revenue has stalled and revenues from other sectors such as content & connectivity revenue has not risen enough to compensate dipping communication revenue.
The telecom industry faces some challenging times and his begs the important question: Where will the Telecom Industry be a year from now?
As the telecom market continues to change, industry players are evolving too and the following technology trends are expected to appear in the near future and forever change the telecom landscape.
–Major LTE Deployment
While companies such as Apple and Amazon have developed devices that support LTE, LTE deployment and usage has not quite taken off in major regions around the world except for America, Korea and China.
A year from now, usage of 2G and 3G networks will continue to decrease as the telecom industry moves to adopt LTE. This is clear because the number of LTE capable devices are on the rise so are subscribers thus telecom operators will have to invest in LTE networks and technology in order to take advantage of the new emerging LTE market.
–Voice LTE Adoption
Voice over LTE is a critical service that will inevitably take shape has LTE continues to be adopted in major regions around the world.
Compared to current applications such as Skype, KNCTR and Viber, Voice over LTE is envisioned to offer a high quality comprehensive service with new, never before achieved experiences such as HD Video and voice calling and Web real- time communication. Simply put, there are endless possibilities with Voice over LTE.
–Increased VoIP adoption in Developing countries
Developing countries in Africa and Asia have yet to fully adopt VoIP and related services due to low Internet penetration.
Over the course of the year, industry players will start focusing on these areas with the mission of increasing Internet penetration, providing smartphones to these emerging markets and ultimately VoIP will be adopted at a higher rate.
A good example is Internet.org where Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other tech entrepreneurs have partnered to connect the next 1 Billion to the Internet.
–Rapid Decline of Traditional Voice Communication
With increase in Internet access and realization of high data speeds through cable modems and fiber technologies, users have shunned traditional voice communication over new innovative communication ways such as VoIP, social networking and Internet messaging.
Voice communication is expected to sharply decrease as users have found cheaper and easier ways to communicate thus telecom companies will be forced to look for new ways of generating revenues sooner or later.
Over the current year, the above-mentioned trends and many others being developed, will have a major impact and playing an important role in shaping the operating model of the telecom industry moving forward.
It is therefore in the best interest of Telecom industry to continuously develop and adopt new technologies to better serve the rapid changing telecommunication industry.