Smarter Telecom
Demand is skyrocketing for more and smarter ways to communicate. Can we keep up?
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Demand is skyrocketing for more and smarter ways to communicate. Our telecommunications need to be instrumented, interconnected and intelligent to keep up.
What’s the sound of a planet talking? A century ago, the answer was simple: people conversing in person or over wired networks. Today, it’s not just everyone, but also everything talking to every other thing, constantly.An estimated 2 billion people will be on the Web by 2011 — and they’ll be doing more than talking. Video on demand, IP television and Internet TV will account for nearly 90% of consumer IP traffic by 2012. When people talk, it will be with many more people — via social networking sites, whose memberships will top 500 million in the next three years.
Consider that 10,000 security cameras in London are connected to the Web, feeding it video 24 hours a day. Or take the 300 connected sensors on a bridge in Minnesota; add the 800 monitoring another in Hong Kong — and multiply by the millions of roads, bridges and buildings in cities around the world. Now add billions of intelligent phones, cameras, cars and appliances, and millions of miles of smart power lines and roadways. Is it any wonder that in just three years, IP traffic is expected to total more than half a zettabyte? (A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes — or 1 followed by 21 zeroes.)
A smarter planet will require a smarter communications infrastructure. High-speed broadband, as important as it may be, does not a smart network make. We need networks to be multidirectional instead of point-to-point. Smart networks must be infused with advanced analytics and intelligence, so they can identify connected, instrumented things and collect relevant data from them. They’ll have to be built on a foundation of standards and software that allow trillions of devices and objects to ‘talk’. And we need next-generation digital platforms on which telecom providers can create and deliver all kinds of services.
Fortunately, smarter communications are at hand. Bharti Airtel, one of India’s leading private telecommunications companies, is using IBM’s digital platform to deliver new services dynamically to hundreds of millions of people. IBM has helped Tata Sky, one of India’s pioneering Satellite TV companies, bring direct-to-home satellite broadcasting services to over a million homes in just the first year of its inception, revolutionizing the television viewing experience long monopolized by cable television companies. IBM is also helping India’s state-owned telecommunications company – BSNL – bring its broadband services to its over 10 million customers across nearly 1000 cities and towns in some of the most remote parts of the country.
A thinking, communicating planet will spur advances in everything from science and medicine, to business and technology to possibilities not yet imagined and will help billions of people join the global economy. When things communicate, systems connect. And when systems connect, the world gets smarter.
Let’s build a smarter planet.
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