Posted by
Guest in
For the nearly 40 percent of Americans that have no high speed Internet access today, the prospect of gaining access means not only connecting to the rest of the world, but making those things urban Americans take for granted possible: things like shopping online, working from home, and researching medical care options.
But consumers aren’t the only ones that will be impacted by proposed broadband legislation. What will universal access to broadband mean for the telecommunications industry?
IBM surveyed over 8,000 consumers and 60 senior executives from more than 40 communication service providers globally to examine how the industry should evolve in the next five years in the wake of increased competition in the service provider community.
The findings:
Fixed telephony will all but disappear in the next decade. Mobile broadband will come of age. The ways in which people communicate are shifting from point-to-point and two-way conversations, to many-to-many, collaborative communications.
This shift is fundamentally changing the way people and businesses around the world communicate, share information, and drive progress.Consumer usage of so-called “fixed voice telephony” (such as land lines still used in some homes) will decrease by 95% in the next 5-10 years; Consumer usage of mobile/wireless broadband will increase by 98% in the next 5-10 years.
The new mandate:
Pervasive broadband infrastructure will be a powerful source of new jobs and economic growth, due in large part to the telecommunications industry’s long-term investments in new services and business models that provide a constructive way to address a variety of public challenges, including healthcare, education, homeland security and workforce/economic development. For example, house-bound patients can be monitored by their physicians via Web-enabled devices that track heart or blood sugar rate.
The ways the telecommunications industry must prepare:
1. Prioritize customer experience investments. Of those service providers surveyed, 61 percent plan to invest more in customer and network analytics, enabling them to deliver more personalized customer experiences, reduce churn and better manage costs by understanding customer behavior, anticipating their needs, and analyzing usage patterns to improve operational efficiencies. Consumers stated they chose providers based on three factors: Cost (75%), Network (70%) and Service (58%).
2. Promote open platforms and ecosystems; they must provide universal access to all types of devices. Of those surveyed, understanding that ubiquity is key in the next decade, 70 percent believe an interaction model that allows access to content with any device (PC, TV, phone, etc.) from any provider will prevail.
3. Invest in, and support the development of, applications outside of the consumer space, driven by increased inter-connectivity and universal broadband access.
IBM provides products and services that create, deliver and manage new telecommunications, digital media and Internet-based services smarter, faster and at a lower cost. For example, through online electronic health records, remote monitoring of vital statistics and on-demand transmission of patient data, medical facilities and patients alike are finding that broadband can help save time, money and lives – especially when the communications infrastructure is extended to rural areas that aren’t served by a local hospital or clinic.
Realizing the potential of smarter communication technology will require the infusion of new capabilities and models into our systems to make it easier for devices to transmit and interpret data, provide more secure connections, and protect identities. The telecommunications industry is in a position to lead, by participating in the national dialogue, and taking important steps to extend the reach and application of broadband infrastructure for Americans.
Posted by
George Faulkner in
As you may have noticed from the last post, IBM’s Sam Palmisano visited the Chatham House stage in London today having delivered a speech titled ‘Welcome to the Decade of Smart.’ Throughout tonight (and over the coming days) we will be posting content and links to images and video from the event here, as they become available.
From the post-event materials being distributed:
On January 12, 2010, Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officers, addressed business and civic leaders at Chatham House in London. In his remarks, he described how forward-thinking leaders in business, government and civil society around the world are capturing the potential of smarter systems to achieve economic growth, near-term efficiency, sustainable development and societal progress.
Links:
Launch a video of the speech: Sam Palmisano at Chatham House
Launch a video of the Q&A from Chatham House: Q&A from Chatham House
Today, Steve Lohr of the New York Times published a brief article about the speech that takes a look at the past year of Smarter Planet work from IBM.
Paul Glader of the Wall Street Journal published an article today as well that examines aspects of IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative.
Posted by
Jack Mason in
Posted by
Guest in
We asked Gary Gohen, who leads IBM's Communications Sector, for some perspective on the opportunity for building a smarter telecommunications system. Below are some of this thoughts:
In working with IBM’s clients in the telecommunications industry, I hear directly from business leaders around the world about the ways their companies can play a role in building a smarter planet by helping to change the way our global communications infrastructure works. And in almost all of these discussions, we talk about the need to improve dramatically the economics of service delivery across all aspects of their businesses, and about new and emerging business models for communications service providers.
These companies are seeing first-hand how billions of people and intelligent devices are driving an incredible increase in global communication. Today, mobile Web subscriptions are at four billion, and counting. By 2011, almost a third of all humanity will be on the Internet. New investments in broadband infrastructures worldwide will likely accelerate this growth, extending the Internet into new markets, and broadening its reach inside existing markets, as more people within established economies gain affordable access to broadband Internet.
All of this growth in demand represents a huge opportunity for telecommunications companies, but to take advantage of it and stay ahead in the ferociously competitive marketplace, they know they need to develop new capabilities. Today's networks will have to become smarter, so they can have the kind of intelligence and analytical capability needed to make sense of the flood of data coming from billions (and eventually, trillions) of connected people and sensors and devices. They will need more flexible, open architectures, so new services can be created and deployed to meet the rapidly changing needs of people who want individually customized services. The kind of evolved, converged information technology system you have to have to support these kinds of capabilities is something IBM calls the dynamic infrastructure.
The transformation is already underway: For example, telecom service providers in India are facing both explosive growth and intense competition. To gain a competitive advantage, some are reinventing their IT to provide deeper connections between business units, the data they generate, and the processes they need to run efficiently. One of India's largest telecom service providers used this model to cut the time required to activate new mobile accounts by 90 percent. When you sign about a million new customers per month, that type of agility is a serious advantage.
In China, a leading telecom company is using social networking technology to bring together the ideas and expertise of company researchers to create new services at a record pace. While in Europe, a provider of both fixed telephony and Internet services is working with us to completely redesign and integrate its business processes to give it the speed and flexibility it needs to meet subscriber demand and capitalize on skyrocketing growth in its home market.
In Indonesia, we're working with a leading telecom service provider on a network management systems that infuses software into its physical communications network to automatically detect and resolve service problems. The system can go further to predict trends in the way its network is used — and adjust accordingly to provide the best possible service to customers.
Successful business models in the global telecommunications industry are increasingly based on this "smarter" approach that leverages instrumented, connected, intelligent systems. With governments and companies worldwide investing in expanding broadband access, and with more people and "intelligent" things coming online by the minute, this is a great time to think about ways to build a smarter telecommunications infrastructure together.
Gary Cohen is the General Manager of IBM's communications sector.
*** Update: Given the topic above, we wanted to share this related video about the preponderance of connected objects and the potential impact for a smarter planet:
