Competitive Advantage gets Re-defined

With the exception of the switch to digital several years ago, the cable industry has largely remained the same for several years. But 2015 will be the year of change. While Asia Pacific countries are the top nations for online video consumption, the region’s consumers are increasingly watching video content online through their mobile devices, according to the European Travel Commission.

Empowered by their devices, consumers in the region want more control and choice in the way they view content. As a result, they are increasingly sourcing for online-delivered content. We a anticipatetic pate 20150 5 be being g thet e yearyea whene the cable companies will make their bets on virtualized networks to cope with the expected increase in IP traffic. Although the transition will take several years, cable providers will use 2015 to assess the options and begin to put together RFPs to find vendors that match their vision.

Meanwhile, as 4K-quality video content poses challenges for network capacity, there’s another HD technology brewing — phone calls. Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is starting to crop up in feature lists for new smartphones, but in 2015 we anticipate consumers will start to finally notice a difference in voice quality between regular phone calls and VoLTE calls. No more, “Wait, say that again.” Concur- rently, we’ll have to wait and see how such a service — which goes from electrical signals over copper lines to IPbased data — will impact both network capacity and security.

We anticipate companies outside of the usual IT circles will start to rely on the cloud in new ways to deliver their products and services to customers. The worldwide private cloud market is expected to grow by some 50 percent from 2013 to US$69 billion in 2018. In 2015, we will see clouds being built by all types of business, in all geographies—including some you might not expect such as, oil and gas companies like Hess. In 2015, private cloud building will become a competitive advantage across industries.

If you look at 2014, the year saw operators’ mad rush to upgrade their mobile networks and to build their infrastructure --backhaul networks were built, sub-marine networks were built, and also mobile networks were built. In 2015, the most interesting trend that we will see will be around resource virtualization. There are various techniques like SDN (software defined networks), NFV (network functions virtualization) , cloud to help virtualize networks. So, we are likely to see SDN, NFV and cloud gaining momentum to achieve this resource virtualization.

As telcos face the challenge of reducing cost and upping their revenues, all these techniques will be of great help.