Happy Radio Day! Reflections on the future of communication
Four years ago, a classmate asked for advice on which technological direction to choose at the university for her brother: among the options considered were software development, algorithms and machine learning, mathematics. I looked at the current list of specializations and, as a typical former communications operator, was surprised by the answer: “telecommunications and communications”. Now a year as a graduate he has been working in a telecom operator, is fond of the security of communication networks and says that three years ago he did not believe his ears and thought that the sphere was dead. Now he is more afraid of not keeping up with everything that happens on the chosen path. But in his thoughts there was a grain of truth: I remember how CDMA was dying, how WiMax took off and was blown away, how services from the VAS pool crashed, the last thing I found was the quiet dying off of 3G. Profile courses on the basics of communication were closed, textbooks that were the gold standard became outdated, instructions, norms, standards were rewritten, market actors were enlarged – it seemed that the era was leaving and the death of mobile communication was also not far off. But it soon became clear that this was the very same digital transformation – only not from empty reports, but real, vividly, organic and correct. Yes, communication has a future – and it is amazing for all of humanity.
While we are using communication, the commercial services of the operators are going crazy in search of how to raise ARPU and develop services in conditions of high penetration of the Internet and cellular communications. Large operators (big three + Rostelecom) are successfully coping with the task: they develop and offer their cinemas, educational platforms, offer enterprises computing and network resources for rent, develop cloud technologies, enter into partnership agreements with developers of user and corporate software, develop research and integration projects. These are obvious and serious steps that can be taken by giants with good human, material and financial capital.
But this is already a reality, but what awaits the communications and telecommunications sector in the near future?
Positive prospects
Fixed connection will continue to exist and develop, since it underlies a huge number of processes, including the most important state functions. All technologies that underlie modern “wires” will require their developers, engineers and designers for a long time to come. Moreover, sometimes fixed communication is the only available form of communication that can be used (for example, for remote regions or under water, including for research purposes). In addition, wires will always be an important piece of converged infrastructure. I would say that this is the only way of communication, for the near future of which you can not worry.
Converged networks have long been used in large infrastructure projects to ensure consistent connectivity and flow of all kinds of information for management, industry and security purposes. With the advent and active spread of 5G, converged networks will undergo a real revolution: the new standard will fit into the chain of connections and will change the speed, efficiency and cost of data transmission in such networks. However, this will bring additional security and energy concerns.
Internet of Things and M2M – another area that will only develop, especially in the use of wireless communication technologies. Numerous sensors, receivers, tags, structures and systems of smart home, smart enterprise, smart transport, etc. are of great value due to their high energy efficiency, big data collection and the relative simplicity and low cost of installing, managing and designing systems for them. However, this is the most vulnerable segment in terms of attacks on infrastructure. Therefore, this will be the area where not even DevOps will be needed, but real universal 4-in-1 engineers: developer + sysadmin + networker + security. And if in the hands of such a versatile person there is also a specialized education (medicine, industry, oil refining and mining, agriculture, etc.), then you can already start looking for a villa in Cannes the demand in the market is ensured for many years to come.
5G cellular networks – this is already a reality, a given, which is likely to be actively disseminated in 2022-2023, having overcome all obstacles from regulators and the market. I think that the time lag between 5G and 6G standards will be no less, or even more, than between 4-4.5G and 5G, so all scientific discoveries, market prospects and consumer chips are ahead of us. Stocking up with final equipment!
Another area that has seemed promising and super tempting for startups and private development for a year now is video communication and video conferencing… Indeed, what would we do without them all of 2020 and the beginning of 2021? However, this direction will remain a niche and corporate product, interest in which will gradually decrease along with the retreat of the pandemic. The fact is that video communication for the mass consumer (for example, all subscribers of telecom operators) is an inconvenient, difficult to manage and not always aesthetic technology. You need a high-quality video camera (they are expensive), or a convenient interface for attaching a smartphone with a good camera, preparation, work on yourself … For a mass user, text messengers and calls (via fixed line, mobile networks and via IP-telephony) remain the priority and most convenient way fast communication.
Communication will become one of the drivers for the development of the automotive industry (and transport in general). Vehicle-to-Everything Wireless (V2X) – “a car (or rather, a transport) connected to everything” will allow cars not only to broadcast information and transmit important, critical data to the driver (and other cars in the broadest sense of the word), but also allow to implement modern solutions in media services, security, navigation, content management, etc. In addition, V2V (transport to transport), V2I (transport to infrastructure) standards will continue to evolve, and this will again become part of large industry systems, not just user stories. Considering that now 4G / LTE is actively used in such “car networks”, 5G will obviously accelerate these processes. I think connected cars will become the industry standard within 5 years.
Communication (wired and wireless) is already a factor splicing many industries, further interpenetration and codependency will only go deeper: industry, education, medicine, software development, construction will become the first industries where the processes will be most noticeable. Language technologies and NLP (Natural Language Processing) processing technologies will increase of great importance in the communications industry – and the request for such an analysis will come from both science and commerce. By the way, it is at the junction of NLP and communication systems that artificial intelligence can become truly close to natural.
And now for the unexpected. In 2013-2015, the idea of virtual telecom operators thundered on Russian telecom MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator – operators that have operational activities and billing, but work on someone else’s engineering facilities and ground infrastructure) – there were some private solutions, travel operators, somewhere you can still see Auchan connection packages. But then the idea in Russia died out (in Europe they live and prosper) and there are not so many MVNOs left, and perhaps only Yota is heard. In the meantime, once borders open and the pandemic ends (or wears off), MVNO ideas can suddenly come to life, serve the tourism industry and get good ARPU. But for this it is desirable, if not obligatory, one condition: it is necessary to think over and consolidate the possibilities of safe remote registration of electronic SIM-cards. This can shake up the market well and dust off the much more expensive tariff plans of cellular operators.
Foggy prospects
Augmented realityis, in my opinion, the most controversial side of telecommunications of the future. It fits perfectly into the gaming industry, medicine and vocational training, but for the general consumer it is still a toy “to swing with glasses and chase Pokemon.” There are several important reasons for this, from the cost of development to the availability and quality of equipment, but the most important barrier is human physiology and psychology; in the field of safety and atraumatic use of augmented reality, developers and engineers face many challenges.
Another idea with a dubious future – satellite communications as a mass product (Starlink from SpaceX, Amazon projects, Facebook). The prospect of high-speed and affordable Internet anywhere in the world looks promising and attractive both from the point of view of an ordinary user and from the point of view of converged systems. But we do not have a single world, without economic, political, technological and ideological barriers and borders – which means that the web will not work on top of the web, there will be the same segmented, patchwork parts of space communication and, I suspect, in some places not particularly accessible. But the dream of a single “supra-regulatory” communication space for the whole world is perhaps even more beautiful than the dream of conquering other planets.
A pleasant and unpleasant side of the future
These areas of development will have several important features that you need to be aware of if you want to join the ranks of those who on May 7 raise a toast to connection without marriage and connection without a single break. So.
The most pleasant side of any communication system is big data. No bank can boast of such a volume and such completeness of data as is available to telecom operators. By analyzing and processing the entire array of information, it is possible not only to send advertising (and, alas, it will not do without it), but also to improve service and customer service, conduct scientific research, scale networks, building the optimal and most cost-effective infrastructure. By the way, there is also a demand for good analytical systems and platforms.
Another good and interesting story is the modularity of communication systems, convergence and parts of systems within common infrastructures. Within such systems, the issue of power supply design, heat management, work with physical infrastructure, and operational problems will be acute. For such systems, strong engineers in these areas will be in demand, who will be able to design and maintain both clusters as a whole, as well as autonomous, discrete networks within it. This is a very difficult task, which after the widespread penetration of 5G will become with three stars.
The unpleasant side effect is quite obvious: with each new milestone in the development of communications, the volume of cybersecurity problems, as well as physical and information security, will grow. It will be necessary to design security systems to ensure confidentiality, fault tolerance, reliability of software and energy systems. Attackers do not sleep and master technologies almost faster than large companies, which means that the likelihood of threats is too high.
But there is still a huge segment of LPWAN (low power wireless remote networks), software-defined radio (SDR), ultra-low power backscatter networks – areas that are actively developing and already in use. And these are new forms of existence of communication and radio, which will obviously be more flexible, cheaper and less material. There is a fantastic world of virtual copies of the physical world and the “Internet of feelings” and neurointerfaces – a future predicted by experts that seems like science fiction. But after all, 5G communication seemed to be a very vague prospect for some time ago (and now it is already here), and Bluetooth was a means of transferring music for students and a connection for a headset in the ear (and now one of the main and most reliable information exchange technologies between devices).
Some technologies will wither away, but only after they have completely exhausted themselves, some will become dependent and will serve new generation systems. For the radio and communications industry, this is a natural process. But the main thing is that smart, talented people, engineers, scientists, programmers, experimenters and amateurs will always stand behind technologies. Everything rests on them.
73, friends.
PS: taking this opportunity, we will provide a link to an interesting article, which we are very proud of, “Communication is the nerves of war”… By the way, his id = 500000 😉
