With MWC Barcelona taking place this week at the Fira Gran Via, Ariana Lynn, Principal Analyst at The Fast Mode spoke to Dom Black, Director of Research Services of Cavell on the company's participation at the event.
Ariana: What are some of the key themes of this year's MWC?
Dom: AI will be a huge focus for MWC 2024 as it makes its impact felt more broadly in the communications space. AI is rapidly leading to a rise in automated and value-added services for customers. As an add-on used to enhance existing services, AI and automation can bring large amounts of value to customers, giving them increased access to data, and insights.
Our research indicates that 58% of companies across the UK, US, and Europe have already adopted a technology described as ‘AI-enabled’, even assuming a bit of that is creative marketing, this still points to a huge wave of AI-enabled services sweeping through enterprises across the world.
When discussing AI at MWC, we expect to see a particular focus on AI policies. Our research indicates that only 44% of companies already have an AI policy, but when considering the AI adoption rates, many of these companies will already be using AI or have AI in their supply chain.
We are in an era of both official and ‘grey’ adoption of AI as employees begin to find use cases for free and open-source AI solutions. Yet while employees might think using ChatGPT in small ways to assist them is harmless, it raises huge data privacy questions. Suppliers will be asked to commit to specific AI policies and usage to maintain supplier relationships and win RFPs.
Ariana: What's the outlook for telecoms, specifically the mobile industry in the next 12 months?
Dom: The outlook for the mobile industry in the next 12 months continues to be positive. Demand for mobile data continues to grow as more applications continue to demand bandwidth and communications transition to data-enabled pathways like Over-The-Top (OTT) apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc.).
The best areas for commercial investment in the mobile industry are AI, Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC), Network Connectivity/Infrastructure, and SMS/Rich Communications Services (RCS). AI stands out as something that will receive investment or be considered for integration into multiple parts of the industry, potentially revolutionising operations from network management to customer service.
FMC has been an emerging technology for a few years but is now rapidly accelerating. Fuelled by the pandemic and the growth of the hybrid and remote working, the demand for seamless transitions and integrations between communications on mobile devices and desk phones has only grown more important to business experiences. FMC is seeing regular trials, especially within UC vendors and service providers, but this has not yet translated to huge orders, but that is predicted to change.
The continued investment in Network Infrastructure and Connectivity is part of both trends. For AI systems to gather, share and process the amount of data needed to operate, they require substantial amounts of network bandwidth that was hitherto unnecessary, and, in many cases, is not yet available.
FMC requires good connectivity both around office locations to enable seamless transitions between fixed and mobile calls with no disruption, and around the home and remote working environments to guarantee a high quality of experience for remote/home workers. Arguably, although 5G is starting to demonstrate its promise, it has not yet achieved the quality, coverage or adoption that is possible with the technology.
SMS/RCS continue to be critical in the telecoms industry. SMS is well-known as a profit driver for telecom providers and is still relied on as the last resort for most two-factor authentication systems (and the first resort for many). RCS is becoming more popular, allowing operators to generate more revenues by enabling two-way, easy, rich media communications with customers.
RCS is positioned against OTT Apps which aim to take messaging traffic away from the mobile network and move it to the data network. This traffic is less profitable for operators, as data costs are lower than per message rates, but more importantly, OTT messages are less user-friendly as they require acceptance of initial communication from the end-user to enable two-way communication with companies. This means that SMS has traditionally been preferred for business and customer focused communications, but RCS is now becoming more relevant to provide more interesting, detailed, and informative messages within the same infrastructure as SMS.
It is important to acknowledge that RCS has been a talking point for many years, However, many operators choose not to invest or deploy it until the growth of OTT actually began to threaten SMS use cases. Now that OTT messaging platforms are beginning to compete more seriously for business traffic the RCS discussion has risen to the front again.
