Our conversations with global operators and vendors over the past year have been very telling, and we predict some particularly exciting market moves in 2016 as operators reveal more significant monetization strategies and network-based value-added service use cases. First and foremost, security will continue to dominate headlines, budgets and service portfolios as operators look to protect subscribers from rapidly evolving threats. The next year will also be a breakout for NFV, as operators successfully tackle a number of deployment and integration challenges. Last but not least, operators will leverage network data to take a slice of the mobile ad market from behemoths like Facebook and Google. Following is a deeper dive into our top three predictions for what the industry can expect in 2016:
#1: MOBILE VULNERABILITIES WILL BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY BY CONSUMERS
Yaniv Sulkes,
AVP Marketing,
Allot Communications
In today’s 24/7 digital environment, the mobile phone has become synonymous with a user’s identity. Whether information is linked via social media, banking or e-commerce, any vulnerability linked to your phone can be potentially crippling - not just financially but personally. In 2015, Allot data revealed that 6% of mobile subscribers (often unknowingly) visit risky sites, and this number will only continue to rise as malware, phishing and other targeted mobile attacks grow in scale and sophistication. Alongside this trend, we anticipate the annual cost of infections, such as ransomware, to double this next year - making mobile security a risk that consumers simply can’t afford to ignore. While there are a number of approaches in the market to solving the security problem, mobile operators that tackle threats at the network level will be in a unique position to address consumer demand for easy, powerful and affordable solutions such as parental controls and content filtering.
#2: NFV GETS READY FOR PRIME TIME IN THE REAL WORLD
2016 Trends and Outlook Polls
Communication service providers and cloud networks are embracing NFV as the new architecture for service delivery and operation. However, a number of challenges such as interoperability, service management and system integration have inhibited adoption potential. The coming year will be filled with increasing lab and proof-of-concept (POC) activity aimed at better understanding and finding solutions to these deployment challenges and specific multi-vendor environment needs. Additionally, as the industry matures in 2016, we’ll see increasing vendor and standards activity as operators ready their networks for the first wide-scale real-world NFV-based architecture deployments. As soon as late 2016 or early 2017, we expect operators to successfully start tackling integration challenges and begin experiencing smoother NFV deployments that free their networks of physical hardware constraints and quickly achieve promised cost and efficiency benefits.
#3: MOBILE OPERATORS WILL CHALLENGE GOOGLE & FACEBOOK IN MOBILE ADVERTISING
Mobile users are consuming more digital content than ever before, which is driving an exploding mobile ad market that is expected to surpass $100B in worldwide spending in 2016 (eMarketer). In the coming year, mobile operators will emerge as viable players in mobile advertising, grabbing market share from giants like Google and Facebook. Operators will be able to deliver competitive offerings by leveraging their data assets to analyze Internet traffic and application activity to create a big data subscriber profile repository that classifies subscriber intent in real time. This capability will enable them to have the insights needed to learn what’s relevant for subscribers and serve the right ad at the right time.
About The Author:
Yaniv Sulkes is a telecommunications professional engaged in designing, developing, productizing and marketing industry leading solutions for over 14 years. Sulkes currently serves as the AVP of marketing for Allot Communications. Prior to Allot, Sulkes managed a large-scale telecom engineering project and served in different software engineering capacities. Sulkes has an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and B.Sc. in industrial engineering and management from Tel-Aviv University.
