If you believe that the metric system isn’t used in the USA, think again. How many times have you heard the term klick used in Hollywood war movies? A klick is a kilometre. Standardisation allows the US military to ensure ease of operation with allies, particularly NATO nations. Wherever in the world an athletics event is taking place, standardisation means a marathon always takes place over 26 miles and 385 yards (which is 42.195 kilometres). If you book a cruise, you will holidaying at a rate of knots, with a knot being one nautical mile per hour. Standardisation lets us go about our lives in the same way as everyone else.
And standardisation is important for business – it creates a level playing field and helps markets innovate to meet the evolving needs of consumers. As technology in wide ranging sectors develops, in many cases becoming increasingly dependent on each other, standardisation will impact innovation, security and decarbonisation.
Cooperation and collaboration benefit everyone, and to illustrate this, let’s look at the mobile industry, which has mostly resolved issues around compatibility, bands, roaming, and so on. Customers can buy almost any device to run on any network anywhere in the world, with few exceptions.
Standardisation and innovation
Standardisation allows for greater competition among manufacturers. When there are common standards in place, manufacturers don’t have to create proprietary technologies that might not be compatible with other devices. Instead, they can focus on differentiating their products through design, features and pricing.
Standardisation also allows developers to create new applications and services that can be used on multiple devices and networks, leading to a more diverse and vibrant mobile ecosystem: greater innovation; better products; more choices for consumers.
Operators can also more easily expand their networks to reach new customers, especially in developing nations, by using standardised equipment and technologies, helping to bridge digital divides and bring mobile services to people who otherwise might not have had access to them.
We will witness a wave of innovation, particularly from India and Africa. Using the building blocks created by standardisation, new services will be developed to solve regional challenges, with innovations impacting on other areas of the world – due to global standards, they can be implemented with minimal friction.
It is, however, vital that standards are not so strict that they slow the pace of innovation.
Standardisation and security
Increasingly, standardisation in the mobile industry will be driven by security concerns. Mobile devices and networks are becoming a key component of national infrastructure – they are interconnected and relied upon for sensitive personal and business information.
Telehealth is a particular area of concern for mobile security. COVID lockdowns created an extraordinary healthcare crisis. The suddenly huge number of patients requiring medical assistance led to greater transmission of the virus in hospitals and GP surgeries, and telehealth was adopted to provide a measure of healthcare without the need for physical contact. This caused a rapid development of a telehealth market. However, security of patient information became a limiting factor in the growth of these telehealth services.
Establishing standards for mobile device security allows developers to more easily design and implement solutions to protect mobile devices from hacking and data breaches. This can be the likes of encryption, authentication, and access controls.
Standardisation and climate change
The mobile industry currently contributes 3.5% of total global CO2 emissions - double the emissions of the aviation industry. As the mobile industry continues to grow, so too will the sector’s carbon emissions. Major changes are required.
Standardisation in the mobile operator sector can play a substantial part in helping to decarbonise the telecoms industry. Establishing common technical standards for the operation of mobile networks means standardisation can facilitate the development and deployment of more energy-efficient practices and technologies, including energy-saving modes for devices, energy-efficient base stations, and efficient use of spectrum.
Standardisation can also support the development of new services and technologies that can help to reduce carbon emissions. For example, 5G enables technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine communications - these can help to optimise energy and use, and to improve resource efficiency in various industries such as, healthcare, transportation and agriculture.
As standardisation permits the development of new services for telework and telehealth, the need for travel is reduced, helping lower carbon emissions in other areas of our daily lives.
In the coming years, we will see the amount of new standards specifically targeting carbon reduction increase within the mobile industry - from those directly designed to help the mobile sector find more energy-efficient ways of operating, to those impacting other areas of society.
Whatever sector your interests lie in, in some form, your business will be dealing with standardisation. The role standardisation plays in increasing security or in reducing carbon in your sector may differ from its impact within the mobile industry, but standardisation will influence innovation. Be sure to react wisely.
