Telecom industry giants predict global development in 2024

Global telecom industry giants’ predictions for 2024

Although 5G covers the world, artificial intelligence reshapes networks, and data centers change, for telecoms, the road ahead is still complicated. Bridging the digital divide, guarding against sophisticated fraud, and promoting sustainability while adopting new technologies with caution are all priorities for 2024.

As generative artificial intelligence takes over mobile devices, the world of Internet of Things (IoT) proliferates, 5G adoption expands, and the foundations of 6G networks are laid, the telecom industry will be in 2024 Expected to continue to accelerate and grow. But despite these advances, the industry still faces serious challenges.

Virtualization of the telecom supply chain driven by OpenRAN (Open Radio Access Network Architecture), lack of standards, influx of big data, and transformation of DevOps pipelines have put pressure on vendors. Additionally, as smartphones become digital treasures, the industry faces increasing attacks from cybercriminals with their sights set on mobile.

Techopedia spoke to some of the telecom industry’s top executives, who shared their predictions for how the telecom industry will change in 2024.

The digital divide will narrow and widen

As the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) 2023 report shows, while the world has witnessed impressive technological advances, these advances have The distribution is not even.

According to the ITU report, although 67% of the world’s population is online, 2.6 billion people still lack access to digital connectivity. This means that globally, there are still a large number of people who are unable to enjoy the convenience and resources of digitalization.

In an interview, Ciena Chief Technology Officer Jürgen Hatheier talked about the human problems hidden behind connections.

We often associate the digital divide with broadband access, so closing the digital divide requires expanding access to high-speed Internet, thereby expanding the scope of the global job market, content, and information. However, this is only part of the problem.

In the modern digital world, mobile connectivity is a sign of economic and social prosperity and is intrinsically linked to financial opportunity and inclusion.

The lack of internet affects the most vulnerable industries and groups in global society. Hatheier warned that the root cause of these socioeconomic disparities has to do with the cost of technology products and services.

"Access to affordable devices is another hurdle to overcome. While a £100 smartphone may seem like a standard purchase for many, this exceeds the monthly income of billions of people, thus limiting Its ability to connect and engage."

Hatheier said the solution is not just to build the most advanced 5G network, but also to ensure that everyone has choice in the market.

"No benefits of 5G or LEO connectivity will be in vain unless you can afford the right equipment to connect to these networks. Many companies in emerging countries are already making their own cheap phones or cheap laptops, allowing People can use it, but there is still a lot of progress to be done." Hatheier added that by 2024, countries where governments invest in infrastructure, equipment is affordable and schools adopt digital education and integrate relevant subjects into the curriculum will The digital divide will shrink. If these factors are not met, the digital divide is expected to widen.

Decentralized operations paves the way for green telecommunications

With the popularity of mobile devices and the increasing demand for big data transmission, telecommunications networks are also undergoing transformation to adapt to the massive flow of information. With the rise of Open RAN, traditional network hardware and software are ushering in the era of digitization and virtualization. This means that network operations will be more flexible and efficient, while also providing the network with more room for innovation and development. This transformation can not only meet users' needs for high-speed, stable and secure networks, but also promote the progress and development of the entire industry.

As Kristian Toivo, executive director of the Telecommunications Infrastructure Project (TIP) explains, the push for performance will have a sustainable impact.

"The telecommunications industry is at a crossroads: it faces the challenge of meeting growing demand for connectivity while reducing carbon emissions."

Toivo added that initiatives to open and disaggregate networks will be implemented in 2023 Gaining momentum in 2016, it is believed to enhance supplier interoperability and diversity, achieve cost savings, and encourage innovation.

"However, the promise of lower energy consumption and reduced emissions will also make OpenRAN an attractive option for telecom companies looking to achieve sustainability goals by 2024."

According to Data shows that wireless LAN accounts for 73% of operators' total energy consumption. If we classify these wireless LANs, operators can better manage the network and address energy inefficiencies. Additionally, by eliminating power-hungry legacy equipment, we can pave the way for a greener network.

Toivo believes that the increasing shift towards open and disaggregated networks will enable telecom companies to reduce energy consumption in 2024. This will make it the architect of a more sustainable and connected world for future generations.

The rise of data centers and edge and micro data centers

Ciena’s Hatheier added that network transformation and sustainability issues are also reasons for the rise of data centers and edge data centers.

"A significant amount of large-scale data center construction is still underway in much of Asia and Australia."

Despite a slight slowdown in growth in North America and Europe, edge data centers are expected to be It's starting to emerge that operators will be prepared to do peering in multiple locations rather than in a centre.

Hatheier explained that new data centers and micro-data centers at the edge of the network are emerging to reduce power consumption from centrally located grids and improve sustainability.

India is a typical example, with many data centers in the country using coal as their energy supply. Compared to North America or Europe, India has only one-tenth the data storage capacity per capita.

"Powering data centers will continue to be a global challenge for us where non-renewable energy sources are available and in places with large, dense populations."

artificial The growth of intelligence will fuel the need for smarter adaptive networks

As enterprises adopt generative AI and new telecom networks and require advanced AI for daily operations, legacy networks are rapidly becoming obsolete , unable to provide the computing power needed for the technology to run smoothly.

Loudon Blair, senior director of strategy at Ciena, believes that enterprises’ dynamic needs for artificial intelligence can effectively respond to technologies such as software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN).

"By 2024, SD-WAN, multi-cloud networking and Network as a Service (NaaS) will be positioned as key solutions in business connectivity, providing a software-centric approach to managing WANs."

Blair added that cloud-centric SD-WAN solutions provide an application-aware architecture that allows the network to intelligently adapt to the different needs of various software applications, including artificial intelligence.

"SD-WAN's ability to identify and prioritize traffic based on the characteristics of different applications lays the foundation for a more efficient and responsive network infrastructure that can handle current and future cloud and artificial intelligence workloads. Challenge.”

Text messaging becomes scammers’ new playground

In contrast, Katia Gonzalez, director of security and analytics at BICS, focused on more serious issues. Gonzalez said text messaging is expected to replace phone calls as one of the biggest threats by 2024, while artificial inflated traffic (AIT) will target businesses and end users.

"Compared to phone calls, these fraud schemes have become more aggressive and sophisticated, making them particularly difficult to detect and stop. As with phone calls, the regulatory framework simply cannot keep up with the evolution of text messaging and AIT ."

Gonzalez added that the industry needs to collaborate on a strategy in 2024 to stop SMS fraud and AIT.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning play an important role in solving this puzzle, but more importantly, operators need to invest resources in training these models with the correct and up-to-date data to effectively discover networks abnormal.

Gonzalez emphasized the importance of cooperation in solving security challenges. He believes that global operators should share intelligence and learn from each other's experiences. He warned that if the industry does not have a regulatory framework that allows machine learning analysts to access the content of text messages to prevent fraud, preventive measures will become obsolete.

Operators face a challenge, which is how to ensure the security and reliability of telecommunications services while also serving the interests of the entire ecosystem. We urgently need to rebuild trust in the telecoms industry, otherwise operators risk losing customers. Therefore, operators should take measures to address this challenge.

Artificial Intelligence: The CISO’s role, reliability and DevOps pipeline

With the proliferation of data points, endpoints and cloud edge deployments, Chief Information Security Officers need to (CISOs) will turn to artificial intelligence to do more with less.

"Currently, there is an alarming increase in the number of professionals monitoring and managing security. As cloud computing and intelligent edge deployments become more prevalent, this number will continue to rise in the coming years."

Robinson is convinced that with the rise of artificial intelligence in cybersecurity, chief information security officers will play more of a commander role. It says that beyond the hype, AI has potential because it is well-suited to solving some of the security industry's toughest problems, such as threat detection, classification and response.

The role of artificial intelligence for CISOs is irreplaceable because it can provide more efficient and smarter solutions. CISOs who don't use AI may be replaced. Over time, CISOs will continue to protect organizations, and we will see more AI-based solutions emerge. It is expected that by 2024, artificial intelligence will once again change the necessary skills required by CISOs.

While no one can deny that artificial intelligence will replace time-consuming and repetitive daily tasks, Sonatype Chief Technology Officer Jeff Wayman said that artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword.

"Artificial intelligence cannot be relied upon for safety and will spread under uncensored OSS (operational support systems)."

Although Wayman believes that artificial intelligence can be achieved with proper training and environment to make up for the lack of security practices, but he also believes that enterprises cannot rely on artificial intelligence to fill this gap.

“The rise of artificial intelligence is embedded in everything but is confused by the end user or consumer, which means we may see something similar to licensing where consumers of OSS may not be fully aware of information security problem because it contains undisclosed artificial intelligence components."

Peter Schneider, senior product manager at Qt Group, also walks cautiously on the road to artificial intelligence. It explains that using AI to speed up one DevOps process will inevitably lead to massive delays in other areas.

“Coding itself is just one of many tasks to create a lovely product. While product localization, code documentation, and generated testing will also be improved with GenAI, human code review, code performance analysis, and Other quality assurance tasks will become new bottlenecks." Schneider added: "While generative AI has been praised for its potential benefits to developer productivity, it is also prone to defects and will Inevitably shifting bottlenecks in the DevOps pipeline from programming to other areas."

"As enterprises generate more automated code and conduct more testing for bugs and security vulnerabilities, hiring hundreds of coders is Unsustainable. As a result, DevOps teams will have to automate a process that is not typically automated - software testing."

Summary

While innovation and growth abound, as As 5G becomes mainstream, artificial intelligence changes networks, and data centers continue to develop, the road ahead for telecommunications is still difficult.

Bridging the digital divide, protecting networks from sophisticated fraud, and ensuring sustainable practices while safely adopting new technologies is a top priority.

In an industry where competition has always been the norm, the biggest obstacle is a change in mindset and business culture, as the tasks ahead require huge efforts, shared commitment and international cooperation.

With predictions for the telecommunications industry, leaders are ready to meet the challenges of 2024. They are working hard to build a more inclusive, safer and more connected world because it is the only way to be safe from potential dangers, risks and threats.

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