It’s not about predicting the future, but making it possible

The beginning of March saw the return of Barcelona based Mobile World Congress (MWC), one of the world’s biggest annual trade shows for the telecommunications industry. With an impressive 88,500 attendees from 202 countries and territories, this is the world’s largest and most influential connectivity event.

With over 190 countries represented, nearly 70 ministers and over 100 heads of regulatory authorities, combined with the biggest names in the communication industry, from Samsung to Microsoft, all uniting to share the future of tech, there’s never been a more exciting time to be involved in the industry.

Delivering innovative thinking and ensuring Sure can provide the most up to date technology to our clients, has always been our top priority. That’s why our team at Sure were once again thrilled to attend and hear first-hand from the those shaping the future talk about how our landscape is constantly evolving. - Here are some key takeaways from the event:

The rise of AI

AI marks a shift in technology as we know it, AI is changing the way businesses work and the spotlight is also on networks!. How they are designed, implemented and optimised, and how the emergence of VR and AR applications are leveraging networks capabilities, was a recurrent topic of discussion.
Two such industries marked as embracing the benefits of AI in relation to telecoms were education and healthcare. Healthcare was once noted as a neglected field in the broader tech ecosystem. But today, staff shortages and remote working transitioning sees professionals seeking alternative solutions to enable them to communicate more effectively and so digital and AI health trends are beginning to gain traction.
One value of AI lies in taking large amounts of data and turning it into useful information for human decision makers. In removing the chance of human error, the generative system can pre-empt where and what mistakes could happen. For customer facing teams in the telecoms industry, AI has the potential to complement customer’s usual service, either by selecting optimal data plans or roaming packages, or by assisting call agents with the best fast track solution.

Sustainability

The importance of establishing ESG requirements, and their significance to investors, is adding more urgency to businesses to clearly state their objectives. This is one of the reasons Sure deployed a point to multi-point XGS-PON solution to deliver fibre to the home - as opposed to other solutions which involve more active equipment therefore more power consumption. And in some of our jurisdictions Sure generate power using wind or solar resources.

Yet energy costs are rising at an alarming rate, further pressing on a need for businesses to react. Vodafone stated that their energy spend was 600 million euros per year in Europe, and now that number is around a staggering 1.3 billion euros.
So how is the telecoms industry combating both use and cost of energy? The good news is new energy-efficient initiatives are being used, such as implementing new algorithms and hardware to manage cooling in data centres and base stations, and using AI augmented software to intelligently turn capacity on and off, to use less power at lower use times – much like your thermostat at home.

Further, 5G technology offers operators more flexibility, automation, and lower costs, with less energy consumed compared to 4G equipment (on equivalent traffic). It was also encouraging to hear at MWC23 that almost 25% of the electricity purchased by the global mobile industry is now renewable, and that 40% of consumers would pay a premium for mobile phone tariffs with a carbon-neutral certification.

Connecting our local communities for a better future is what guides us at Sure and to that aim, delivering the most suitable technologies to our customers, combined with best-in-class service from our expert team, is critical. Stay tuned for part two of MWC23 for more on the latest and greatest devices, and what we can expect to see next from 5G.