Telecom

Trends and innovations
    The telecom sector faces several looming challenges in the form of network load and infrastructure optimisation, effectively addressing subscriber grievances to reduce churn, and improve security for telecommunications. The top telecom industry trends directly address these challenges, in addition to improving the overall efficiency for telecom companies. Increasing global connectivity, further fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, presents numerous opportunities for telecom companies to reach more subscribers and offer innovative products and services. Smart factories, cities, homes, cars, and industrial workplaces require efficient and affordable cloud and 5G technology solutions, especially to address the growing number of connected people and things.

Impact Of Industry Trends on the Telecom Sector
    The internet of things (IoT) devices and sensors, connectivity solutions including next-generation WiFi and Bluetooth, as well the promise of 5G networks and technology dominate the top telecom trends. Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms influence data analytics and offer various opportunities for automation in the telecom sector. The penetration of smartphones and reliable internet generates large volumes of high-resolution content.
    Telecoms develop network solutions to manage and optimise speed and latency to further enable the growth of high-quality image and video content. In addition to these major telecom trends, the industry also sees the development of cloud and edge technologies for enabling smart industrial processes as well as solutions to improve human-to-machine and machine-to-machine communications.

Internet of Things
    IoT devices and sensors influence almost all industries of the technology economy. It improves people’s quality of life, allows businesses to increase their profits, and improves management. IoT is also beneficial for governments looking to decrease their information technology (IT)-related expenses. Interconnection between devices, sensors, infrastructure, and computing elements further enables new ways for management. For example, decentralised operations, condition-based monitoring, and predictive maintenance ensure efficient communications between various IoT devices. In this way, IoT automates production processes and allows the implementation of Industry 4.0 concepts in the telecom sector.
    Highly customisable Industrial IoT and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software solutions to empower organisations to efficiently collect data. One of the multiple integrated software modules, MQTT, uses special data-transfer protocols to connect thousands of field devices to any cloud or SCADA system. N3uron software runs on multiple operating systems and hardware without affecting performance. Moreover, the software’s built-in networking security and data integrity checks follow industry standards of data formats. All of this allows companies to efficiently create and operate IIoT device networks.

Connectivity Technologies
    Connectivity technologies are constantly evolving and include both wired and wireless communications. The development of communications technology is critical in today’s IT-environment, with increasing data volumes, IoT devices, and people using the internet. Further, users increasingly share high-quality digital data, such as videos, photos, and music. All of these factors, along with the increasing use of satellite communications, contribute to the emerging telecom trends with innovation in connectivity technologies.
    A telecom operator for global continuous IoT connectivity, merging satellite and terrestrial networks under 5G protocols. Their hardware does not require any customisation on the device side since satellite constellations act as a cell tower for IoT devices. Moreover, satellites handle messages in a secure and transparent way, ensuring customers’ data is safe. Sateliot’s connectivity solutions find applications in a wide range of industries, including utilities, maritime, oil & gas, and agriculture.

5G Network& Technology
    5G technology is the next big upgrade for telecommunication networks and devices. It provides a much higher speed, than previous cellular broadband network standards, and, most importantly, has much lower latency. Latency is very important for cloud gaming as well as VR content streaming. Massive machine-type communications (mMTC) that 5G networks provide enable the creation of high-density IoT networks, from IIoT to smart homes. Such wide-spread applications make 5G one of the most important upcoming technology trends for the telecommunication sector.
    Simnovus is building efficient UE simulators for 5G networks. Based on software-defined radio (SDR) technology, they allow transforming traditional x86 hardware into a UE simulator. This agile and cost-effective solution is suitable for testing telecommunication equipment and developers of such equipment. The UE simulator provides testing with realistic patterns of traffic for different network technologies, extensive logging, and elaborate statistics. Further, the simulator’s licensing supports up to 1000 devices.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
    Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are other big telecom trends impacting the industry. Digital transformation requires the extraction of meaningful information from data, gathered by IoT sensors and devices. At the same time, the expansion and complication of the internet create the need for high speeds and low latencies, prompting new solutions for internet connection management. To this end, developing AI solutions that resolve numerous problems related to network performance.
    IoT/AI offers an IoT platform that combines network connectivity, cybersecurity, and analytics operating in Edge networks. The platform analyses the data from the mesh network locally using ML algorithms. In addition to military-grade cybersecurity, IoT/AI’s sensor platform is suitable for the industrial, healthcare, defense, energy industries.

High-Resolution Content
    The penetration of smartphones and reliable internet leads to increased consumption of high-quality, and often heavy-to-transfer, content. The growth in high-resolution content, in turn, drives improvements in the quality of traditional information media such as videos, pictures, and music. Novel telecommunications help businesses adapt to new types of information media, such as virtual, augmented, and mixed reality- (VR/AR/MR) and cloud-based gaming. These new types of content require not only high-speed transmission but also low latency, prompting development of high-capacity telecommunication networks.
    Building networks specifically for online multiplayer games. To reduce lag and create a seamless experience for gamers, Subspace uses a combination of hardware and software solutions. These include custom network routing hardware built for accelerating games and software to protect the integrity of the game. Together, these measures lead to higher player retention, matchmaking pools, and revenue for studios as well as publishers.

Cybersecurity
    The increasing number of cyber-attacks and low-security IoT devices, new central processing unit (CPU) hardware vulnerabilities, and the growing dependence on computing infrastructure make tackling security risks challenging. In any industrial network, systems are continuously managed in an attempt to stay ahead of evolving cyber threats, but these methods often conflict with the network’s core requirements of reliability and availability. Innovating industrial networks by allowing systems to remain dynamic when faced with attacks or vulnerabilities.
    Cybersenshi developing a cybersecurity tool that discovers and fixes customers’ website & network security weaknesses. The database covers over 130.000 cybersecurity weaknesses of websites, networks, systems & databases. It is suitable for both small businesses, without deep knowledge in cybersecurity as well as for medium and big businesses.

Cloud Computing
    Cloud computing is a fast-growing technology trend within telecommunications. The spreading of IoT devices and the use of more sophisticated ML algorithms leads to the high demand for computing power. There are many benefits of migrating data, applications, and other business elements to a cloud computing environment. From equipment, platforms, infrastructure, and company functions, bringing greater connectivity and integration solutions for businesses. All connected environments, from cities and factories to houses and cars, require improvements in cloud integration technologies.
    A platform for subscription, data policies, and resource budget allocation using a web-based dashboard. The dashboard’s architecture scales to multiple edge nodes, providing automatic synchronisation and caching to secure network operations in case of failure. Cloud Backend’s architecture is also suitable for enterprises expanding or optimising their networks and systems.

Communication Models
    The spread of smart and IoT devices also leads to an increase in communication channels, such as machine-to-machine (M2M), vehicle-to-everything (V2X), device-to-device (D2D), human-to-machine. Communication models differ in the connectivity technologies they use from hardware to software. Communication models are combined under include next-generation WiFi & Bluetooth, which are the basis for new products and technologies for a wide range of companies – from large banks and car manufacturers.
    Providing hardware solutions for managing cybersecurity risks inherent in M2M communication networks. Aiming to improve security for connected and autonomous vehicles, smart city services, electrical grids, and banking networks. The solution provides hardware authentication using a decentralised cryptographic protocol. Angoka’s solution also enables silicon devices fingerprinting based on their physical properties, which then allows for generating cryptographic keys and secure device identity.

Software-Defined Networks (SDNs)
    In today’s increasingly digital environment, business applications require high-performing and extensive networking operations. Particularly for cloud computing, it is essential for businesses to deploy, manage, and support connectivity across a variety of environments. Typically, complex tools are required to build and manage modern software-defined networking technology. Some vendors only provide solutions that work on their equipment, which then limits the extent of communications capabilities. Developing SDN to improve network performance, monitor its performance, and enable centralised control.
    Developing network load-balancing solutions for SDNs. edgeNEXUS optimises routing changes based on a number of factors including load volume and application performance, thus adding a layer of intelligence between applications, networks, and SDN controllers. Their Global Server Load Balancer (GSLB) provides tools for multi-datacenter, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud load balancing and failover. GLSB is suitable for enterprises looking to control their application delivery service depending on user or region.

Edge Computing
    Edge computing brings data computation and data storage closer to the source of data instead of a centralised remote cloud. This reduces latency, increases bandwidth, and simplifies maintenance while it allows industrial manufacturing companies to expand their computing capacity by combining devices with edge data centers at lower costs. Lower latencies and high speeds are required for modern applications, like cloud gaming and VR. Edge Computing greatly improves the quality of experience for end-users and lowers data exchange requirements.
    Axellio builds FabricXpress – a high-performance, high-density computing and storage platform for heavy applications. This solution is suitable for Edge networks that have a high density, high bandwidth, and low latency requirement. In addition to improving network performance, they achieve this with a small energy footprint and low costs.