Telecom industry has come through 2020 relatively unscathed, as one would expect of a utility service. The market for IT systems that support telcos barely declined in 2020 and should return to low single digit percentage growth in 2021. Not a very exciting headline growth rate compared with some other technology fields but within that overall market trajectory there are some faster growing segments. Omdia’s ICT Enterprise Insights Survey suggests that the majority of service providers will increase their spend on AI tools in 2021. More than half plan to up their spend on customer engagement systems (CRM, mobile apps, etc.). A microservices-based architecture is a pre-requisite for most new software purchases, as is the ability to deploy the software on public cloud. IT budgets remain under pressure in the telecom industry but there is an increasing realization by the C-suite that without IT modernization, telcos will remain commoditized connectivity providers.
5G is going mainstream, so are its failures to deliver on some of its high promises. This has driven certain quarters of the industry to start talking about 6G, though there has been plenty of uncertainty on what 6G is about. 5G has made significant moves to a more software defined Core Network and RAN, there are some big steps remaining. Take extended reality—mainstream adoption requires the technology to facilitate both augmented and virtual reality as well as piece the experiences together in real time. This roadmap is very rich, and the truth is 5G may only take us so far.” Another issue that has troubled the 5G ecosystem is power consumption. Despite skillful spinning by companies like Nokia, who argues that energy consumption per gigabit in 5G is lower than 4G, it doesn’t change the fact that 5G’s overall energy consumption will significantly increase because 5G will require much higher data units than any previous generation. 2020 has also been a year when Open RAN has become the focus of many discussions, ranging from FCC hosted webinar to many inches of columns, including those on this publication. Despite the buzz the technology has generated, its large-scale commercial success has proved elusive, especially in 5G.