Lewis Insight

It was my pleasure to be on stage with Dr Mike Short at the MEF event in London this month.

Mike’s history working in the telecoms industry with BT, Cellnet, O2 and Telefonica has now been complemented by his five years as Chief Scientific Advisor at the Department of International Trade in the UK. We discussed the Metaverse and how it might help People With Disability (PWD).

Some highlights of the interaction were:

• People want to understand the impact on their business, the ability to trade internationally and not to be left behind.
• In the UK there are over 300 incubators and accelerators looking at innovation, and new opportunities such as WEB 3.0 and the Metaverse. A major portion of this is from the universities but multi-national Corporations are also heavily involved.
• Web 3.0 focuses on the 3-dimensional world which is by definition, more visual and indeed more international. And, of course, if this is to be accessible to and inclusive for everyone, the hooks need to be built in to make it so from day one.
• Sport and entertainment are already sharing 3D graphics as part of their shift in service. This is B2B for now but will inevitably move to B2C.
• Holograms and 3D imaging exist now and are leading to scale up solutions and 3D collaboration in the future. But, once again, very visual and not designed inclusively.
• Does the Metaverse give us the opportunity to build a digital twin of life itself?
• XR is being used today to visualise what might be inside a building during an emergency situation.
• Extending that to model how someone with a disability interacts with their environment presents some major advancements in the whole digital interaction world.
• As a blind person, will my digital twin be able to see? Can that ‘seeing’ digital twin feed information back to me in the real world about the layout of a room, where the door is to the restaurant or what facial expression Mike has while I am asking him a question?
• As we develop the Metaverse in its many manifestations, we have the option to allow individuals to interact in the ways they prefer whilst addressing specific restrictions.
• So gesturing, shouting, and ultimately brain wave interpretation can all act as reasonable interaction channels with the Metaverse.
• Tracking and logging all these interactions will also form a critical part of the Metaverse. Imagine all of the potential information that flows off a patient getting a remote check up from their doctor. Multiple types of data flow, multiple channels through which they run and AI playing an interpretive role at various points.
• The World Cup also gives us a hint of what is to come. The stadia are full of data and analysis about players and actions. Being able to get your preferred data set and watch your preferred player on your local screen is a step towards the Metaverse.

The goal of miniaturising VR headsets down to a sensible pair of glasses also runs in parallel with work being done in the vision impaired and cognitively impaired worlds. So then we can see a convergence between formerly very isolated disability related research and that of the mainstream consumer electronics worlds.

This will only benefit everyone in the long run through economies of scale and development being spread throughout the world.

We should emphasise that we are by no means at the end of the journey. A lot of great progress has been made within individual sectors such as vision and hearing impaired. Mobility is somewhat more fragmented but the growth in power and accessibility of smart phones in particular, complemented by smart speakers and wearables is giving us optimism that it will accelerate and bring many more opportunities for all. And, this isn’t just a Social Responsibility issue. Bringing the excluded parties into the market offers a revenue opportunity for those embracing inclusion.

The call to arms for everyone is simple: building an inclusive future is everyone’s responsibility. We are very lucky in the technology sector as it shifts to be more software-centric, that we can build inclusion in from scratch.

So now is your chance to go out and understand how the Metaverse will change business and society and be sure to push the message of Inclusion.

In the meantime, you could take a break and listen/watch the full session from the event!

As a blind person, there is nothing more frustrating than standing at a bus stop in my native London and have a stream of double-deckers sail by without knowing whether one was mine.

As a telecoms analyst of some 30 years, I am equally frustrated that the technology is out there to give me the information but it is neither integrated nor accessible. So, what’s missing and how close are we to making smart services in the city accessible to all?

My framework for thinking about this is a series of concentric circles with the individual at the centre with rings of household, local neighbourhood, society and business surrounding them (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Living in an increasingly digital environment

Let the data flow

The digitization of mapping information has revolutionized navigation. However, putting all information relating to a city environment into a single system is unlikely given political structures. That said, some, like New York have appointed a head of accessible integrated transport for the first time. And an open data approach by the city authorities, such as that by Transport for London, allows third parties to integrate data into appropriate applications. Moving around the city is therefore facilitated by information sources about transport options, shops, civil facilities as well as those essential media and entertainment outlets. Many of these have been isolated systems in the past.

“The smartphone features to serve as a proxy for senses that might be denied to the individual”

5G represents not only an opportunity to provide complementary location input but also the range of connection possibilities in terms of bandwidth and latency. It will support all of the smartphone features to serve as a proxy for senses that might be denied to the individual: the cameras become the eyes, the microphone the ears and the processor can help with cognitive issues. Add to this a range of wearables to act as extra sensors for the device and we have the basis of embedding the individual at the heart of the digital environment.

Recent events have brought the focus onto how we help people at home – both from a medical as well as a remote working angle. Once working patterns settle down post-Covid, the emphasis will be more on health and social care. 5G can act as the facilitator for two-way interaction with individuals and, of course, the development of robotic technology can increasingly offer support in the home.

“Many of those digitally excluded are disabled or fall into the higher age category”

We’re generally more comfortable with the use of video to interact with the healthcare system at all levels. Secure, reliable affordable communications in every household will be a major benefit of 5G deployment. However additional efforts are still needed to bring connectivity to every member of society. Not surprisingly, many of those digitally excluded are disabled or fall into the higher age category.

This raises the question of where information flows. The reality will be multiple data sources from the individual. Some will go back to the individual, some to public authorities, some to carers and families, some to medical staff and doubtless others. Since 5G offers us the possibility of segmentation of the full network with dedicated resources, this would be an ideal use of 5G slicing to deliver specific services. For example, many elderly people fail to wear their emergency response devices, so falls and illness can go undetected for significant periods of time. Wouldn’t it be better for all concerned if the house could monitor the activity of that individual: switching off the kettle, moving around the household, taking medication? Perhaps a little too intrusive for some, but potentially lifesaving for many.

A smarter interface

One of my favourite developments in recent years is the smart speaker. Some have an issue with their intrusiveness but as a blind person, they help me manage online shopping, the household lighting and heating as well as, and most importantly, giving me access to sports radio and music. Designed for the masses, they actually help various categories of disabled people as well as those with more limited digital skills.

The interface is, of course, absolutely key. With the smart speaker, it is easy to ask about the weather, call a taxi, find out when the refuse is being collected, shop online, find out which doctor is on call or ask for something to cheer you up. While enormous strides have been made in making mobile phone and computer interfaces more accessible, giving people a choice of how they interact with all of these applications is vital.

“Application must be designed and developed for inclusion from the outset”

Application must be designed and developed for inclusion from the outset. Any attempt to bolt on an accessibility facility after the fact rarely succeeds. Having inclusivity at the heart of all application iterations is also central to keeping everyone connected. There is nothing more frustrating than accessing an application, for example, for an airline, that was previously accessible to find a new version just blurts out ‘button, button, button’ as I scroll across the screen instead of telling me when and where my next trip is going to be.

Figure 2: The city that understands my needs

So, rather than the frustrating experience at the bus stop, in the future my device will give me the options of how best to get to my destination by public transport and perhaps even the option of an autonomous taxi picking me up and dropping me off at the right place. If I were a wheelchair user, it could also drop me at the ramp accessible door. Furthermore, once inside a building, my navigation application will tap into the smart building systems and guide me to the appropriate room. Perhaps it’s a stretch for an espresso and almond croissant to be waiting for me when I get there, but this emphasises the benefits of providing access to all available information and having it fed into an accessible system (see Figure 2).

The beauty of this is that simply designed, data-rich environments will benefit everyone. And, as we bridge the digital divide and bring everyone into the fold, the cost of running services in a city will decrease. In effect, this is a marriage of the outside-in and inside-out approach. The city and its services digitise their services and the individual benefits from digital services and connected devices.

Finally, with 5G being deployed on a national basis, this thinking does not need to be restricted to big city dwellers. In the future, towns and rural communities will have equal access to connectivity and integration of all local data and services – literally making everyone’s lives easier.

What is needed to make this scenario a reality? Quite simply, ubiquitous high-quality connectivity from the telecoms industry combined with design and integrated data management and joined up thinking from the relevant authorities, to make all services accessible to the whole community. The result? A city built for the needs of everyone.

Please note: This article was originally published by Nokia.com.

Connectivity in the enterprise world used to be about connecting buildings and people. The advent of 5G raises the game to encapsulate every moving and fixed asset in the business. The question is how to best connect those assets and how to leverage that connectedness as part of the business flow. 5G, for the first time, brings a deterministic flavour to the connectivity of these contributing components. It also brings more accurate location tracking and high definition video to be considered throughout an organisation. Furthermore, through ‘slicing’, it brings dedicated network service to discrete elements of the business. This is not to mention the higher capacity and lower latency that often get the headlines when discussing 5G in consumer and business contexts.

From the business perspective, every flow of information contributing to the way the business works internally and externally can be connected. The challenge for the business leaders (right from the top) is to identify these flows and to see how being connected would improve individual areas as well as the benefits of linking formerly separate aspects. On one level, putting connectivity into smaller and smaller devices is getting easier. The creation of the eSIM , with no physical element to embed, makes the smaller sensor elements more inclusive. The range of ‘things’ that can potentially be connected is dramatic; from a seismic sensor plugged into a mine wall to a major piece of industrial equipment costing millions. Having them connected allows cleaner and frictionless flow of information to support the business. In the mining example, it allows tracking seismic activity as a background function whilst also controlling the expensive vehicles that trundle around mining locations. Both have a realtime component. One seems more critical but, in fact, running those vehicles more efficiently, feeding back location, maintenance status, operational efficiency and even human behaviour can all contribute to a more efficient running of the business.  Take any business environment, and a similar range of data capture can be tracked to improve the use of physical and human assets.

In the past these elements would have been addressed by separate and often isolated technologies. Different networks for different aspects of the business from TETRA and WiFi to good old fashioned wiring. All of these come with individual applications for their areas and their own life cycles. The arrival of private mobile networks and the availability of spectrum for this purpose is the real game changer. The business can, for the first time, consider using cellular as the means of bringing it all together. This is easier where spectrum has been allocated for this specific purpose, such as in Germany, but it can also be addressed in conjunction with the mobile operators. The difference is that each piece being connected does not require a separate subscription. The business invests in its 5G private network and essentially controls the flow of everything within the factory, campus, retail environment and office. Resultant data is kept local where appropriate, and processed via suitable edge compute facilities. Where the public network has to be involved, then the route out to the cloud and a more centralised, global element can easily be incorporated.

5G moves the role of communications on from monitoring to controlling. Connected everything will come from improved operational efficiency of vehicles, reduced maintenance on equipment and more efficient distribution of product and service to customers. The calculation of how the cost of increased connectivity stacks up against the cost of investment is an individual company issue. What is clear is that a combination of 4G, 5G, WiFi, fibre, cloud and the Edge gives business the flexibility to deal with that data and turn it into executable information locally, nationally or globally, according to requirements.

Hence, where business formerly saw cellular as an expensive and inappropriate service for supporting business processes and analysis, it should now be seen as an enabler.  This is a way of dramatically improving the supply chain, improving information flow between suppliers, partners and customers and driving efficiency into all parts of the business. No doubt the Boards of enterprises will want to hear the business case. Identifying an anchor tenant for the private network is an obvious start point. However, once the investment is identified for that anchor tenant, the other elements contribute dramatically to the business. In the mining example, the payback on those massive trucks is justified through more efficient operations, uptime, proactive maintenance and potentially even removing the need for human operators. All the other elements of the mine are also connected through the private network, delivering everything from tracking the raw materials being extracted through to building management and the services employees require on site or remotely. In short, the networks allows for a holistic view of the business to be captured in real time. Yes, the analysis of that data is the vital element but it can be done remotely if required and all parameters adjusted accordingly.

Education cuts both ways. Gone are the days of business force-fitting their requirements into rigid telecoms service offerings. The services that CSPs now provide have to fit into and around the business processes that drive the particular enterprise. Connectivity is truly embedded into every aspect of the business, but today’s and tomorrow’s connectivity services must not constrain the way the business works. This requires a greater degree of industry knowledge and may require integration and management skills from a number of parties. As one Group CIO put it to me, we need ubiquitous, high quality connectivity in the context of “my” business. 

In short, the roles are reversed: businesses can now have an open-mind to think of every process within their organisations and expect connectivity to be built into the support infrastructure. The CSPs, and others building and managing private networks, can no longer expect the business to adapt to fit in with the constraints of technology, but need to build the different generations of connectivity into those business flows. This will require deeper sector knowledge from the suppliers and their ecosystem but it will embed them into these businesses for the long term.

As an industry, telecoms are obsessed with introducing the next generation.  None more so than 5G.  Not only has it naturally been promoted by the chipset and telecoms equipment manufacturers, but it has also been hijacked by the world’s politicians as an easy attention grabber during election campaigns. 

5G around the world

Given the universality of the marketing push, you would expect some consistency across the globe. In reality, the rollout of 5G is very patchy for a number of political, economic, and technical reasons.

• China has the largest number of 5G users today. The industry has consolidated under the guidance of the government, and the push for 5G as an inherent part of the next wave of economic acceleration has helped drive adoption.
• South Korea has also seen a major push from the government in conjunction with the main mobile operator, SK Telecom, all backed up by a strong play from Samsung.
• The United States has seen major activity around claims of 5G firsts from the top three operators with the newly merged T-Mobile/Sprint providing an aggressive catalyst for the industry as the ‘uncarrier’. 
• Europe has been somewhat slower in its push for 5G, perhaps primarily due to the success of 3G and 4G, and the regulatory environment resulting in higher competition. 

The inconsistency in figures being used does cause some problems when trying to analyze how quickly the 5G market is growing. Since the 5G label indicates innovation and faster speeds, we often hear of 5G-ready radio, 5G-capable handsets, and availability of 5G in certain locations – even though they may not actually be using a 5G service since there isn’t ubiquitous coverage yet.  

What should be noted is that every country and every telecom provider is different and should be taken on their individual merits. What is interesting, is that markets like China and the US have settled down around three major mobile service providers whilst the more fragmented European markets have not had the same success pushing 5G so early.  

5G hardware availability for consumers

The availability of 5G handsets has, of course, been a factor. Apple’s entry with its 5G devices in October 2020 has certainly given the market a welcomed boost. At the same time, the advent of lower-cost handsets has been most welcomed in markets where they can only dream of the sky-high ARPUs that US players enjoy. (A fellow analyst moving from the US to Europe recently reported he had reduced his communications bill by 90 percent!) While the top end of the market sees handsets pushing well past $1,000, any mass market is going to need the sub $200 handset to gain any sort of scale.

Talk of a 5G premium for consumer users was initially seen as inevitable. Early market activity has seen most of these premiums removed, hence raising questions about the profitability against the significant investment required to get 5G across the whole of a market. This could change if new use cases or “killer app” emerges that justifies a price premium.

5G opportunities for telcos: Network slicing and private networks

In some ways, the world’s telcos have been swept along in the 5G marketing momentum. The availability of spectrum and its auctions play a major gating role. Under previous generations, telcos were looking for data rates that would easily support requirements from business and consumer applications, which should be satisfied by the gigabit speeds promised by 5G. New low-latency offerings including ‘slicing’ will bring new dimensions to mobile offerings, but initially, these will likely be focused on the enterprise market. 

The availability of spectrum for industrial purposes is one of the more immediate areas of actual application of 5G. Private 5G networks have captured the imagination of businesses where large campus or high bandwidth video-based applications are vital. Early examples in ports, airlines, factories, and oil & gas facilities have all witnessed encouraging activity. Private networks are most likely to see the greatest commercial activity of any 5G use case, as campus and larger facilities’ implementations benefit from a fresh approach to building out their communications infrastructure. 

If 5G is to thrive in the enterprise market in the short term, it will be essential for telcos to partner with companies who have the essential industry knowledge of how processes work. Embedding 5G into every aspect of a company’s activities requires a lot more knowledge of how each business operates and how technology can be used to solve their specific problems. 

From the telco perspective, the investment in 5G end-to-end is a much bigger story. New radio is one thing, but building out the 5G core, getting the right connectivity in place to link the radio towers back into the main network, and rolling out ubiquitous, consistent service is a long journey. While it might be ‘available’ in some large cities, it’s sometimes proving patchy. The promise of 5G changing society and industry requires consistent delivery of the service everywhere. 

Longer-term, as the different national fiber backbones are built out to connect the tower infrastructure, 5G will become the default service for consumers and businesses alike. The arrival of ‘slices’ dedicated to different corporate customers or different next-generation service providers, will enhance the underlying role of connectivity. But what is most important now is getting the house in order to prepare for whatever is thrown its way in the future. The telecom industry should prioritize 5G investment to put all parts of the fixed and mobile network infrastructure, service creation, and delivery into a new framework, align itself with the cloud and device sectors and prepare for a new role in the broader digital economy.

This article first appeared in Futurithmic on 1st Feb 2021.

In 2020, the telecom industry took on the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic and came through the test with a very positive scorecard. Many outside the industry thought that fixed and mobile networks would creak and fall over as traffic patterns shifted and soared through the new reliance on video-based collaboration for work and the increased demand for Netflix, Disney, Amazon, etc. Those skeptics were wrong:

• The fixed broadband networks took up the bulk of the new traffic demand from home with mobiles alongside laptops latching onto the home WiFi in order to keep business communications flowing and entertainment customized around our individual preferences.
• Mobile networks adjusted their radios to literally point away from business locations and directly into the homes where we were all plotting the WFH revolution that many had dreamed of for decades.
• In the early days of different lock-downs, good old-fashioned voice traffic rocketed as we wanted to check on our friends and family and a basic phone call seemed the easiest way to keep in touch, especially with the more elderly members of society who have never heard of WhatsApp, Facetime, Zoom or Skype.

The seemingly impossible, made possible

Telcos don’t have the reputation of being fleet of foot but in this case, they did experience swift and significant changes.

• Tens of thousands of workers formerly tied to their office desks were switched to home working in a matter of days.
• Customer service staff were transported from noisy contact centers into their sitting rooms, kitchens, and even bedrooms to handle an explosion in calls.
• With physical stores closed, customer interaction across all digital channels was accelerated.
• Thanks to the automation of many systems and processes, minimal operational staff were required in buildings.
• Engineers entering data centers for their telcos, willingly carried out tasks for their competitors, making use of the sheer fact they were physically in the building.
• In some emerging markets, people were recruited to literally stand on street corners and offer to ‘top-up’ accounts in order to keep people connected.

The industry did a great job both in keeping its networks and systems up and running against this dramatically different demand whilst also continuing the on-going transformation of many aspects of the business.

In short, this has been a real shot in the arm for an industry not known for its agility to change direction quickly and respond to different market circumstances.  

However, the pandemic has not changed many of the underlying trends at play in the telecoms market around the world, including:

• Pressures from a competitive landscape continue to push prices down and keep industry revenues flat or even shrinking;
• The content market is increasingly dominated by global players with deeper pockets than the now fundamentally national telecoms operators;
• The advent of SD-WAN, which represents a potential reduction in spending per location and per customer as the services flex around the way the business is organized, benefiting from the broadband connections already in place and replacing the expensive legacy services;
• Hyperscalers encroaching on the telecom patch with their direct internet connections and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) offerings;
• Datacenter giants, wholesale fiber and tower companies benefiting from the more open software environments and positioning themselves to offer host neutral and edge services that will compete with telcos directly;
• Systems Integrators, with their industry-specific knowledge, looking to leverage both the more open supplier ecosystem and private 5G spectrum, where available, to strengthen their own position in the market.

In many ways, this plays out the idea that telcos are mere utility bandwidth providers that I first heard at Logica back in 1992. The difference today is that telcos are competing with some very strong global players with vastly different scales to their own national footprints. At the same time, governments and regulators are pushing for the final piece of truly universal coverage to get broadband out to the rural communities. The net/net of this, for me, is the need to deliver high quality, ubiquitous connectivity that everyone and everything can enjoy. I jokingly labeled this “Plain Old Broadband” (POB) in an homage to the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) that was the mainstay of the industry for decades. Telcos cannot play in all the adjacent markets of media, enterprise applications, data centers et al. They need to focus on their sweet spot of providing the connectivity that everyone needs in usual and, of course, the most unusual times.

Brand awareness and affinity

In the brand world, we talk about awareness and affinity. Telcos were formerly in the Awareness category with relatively lower NPS scores. The reliability of broadband to keep us all connected during the pandemic has certainly improved the Affinity we feel to our telecoms providers. This more positive position should not be read as a green light to push aggressively into the next generation of connectivity nor into adjacent worlds of media, finance, or business applications. The focus should be on building out that ubiquitous, reliable set of connectivity services on the one hand coupled with partnerships with those companies driving the personal and business environments.    

The economic impact of COVID-19 is still unknown. We saw pre-paid mobile markets suffer as people pulled back from spending during lock-down. Doubtless, the businesses that are floundering across the world will aim to reduce their spending, including connectivity. We saw many of the world’s telcos undertaking activities to support healthcare staff, the most vulnerable in society, and continue much of their foundation work with charities and the unconnected. This may well need to be extended into 2021.

This article first appeared in December 2020 on Futurithmic.