Author: Peter Linder

I am is a 5G evangelist and Head of 5G Marketing for Ericsson in North America. My mission is to turn your mobile grey zones into black and white insights, to help you make an impact when driving 5G in your company. I share experiences gained at the intersection of tech and digital marketing.

Turn to Transformation – Transpiration Too Tedious

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When do legacy 20th-century network elements stop being an asset?

Sweating your legacy network assets has been a popular strategy among providers of legacy voice and data services. The combination of low revenue growth and a desire to avoid additional investment has resulted in many transformation strategies ending up in a binder on a shelf, often together with their counterparts from previous years– but this is about to change.

In the late 1990s, Y2K transformation projects intended to prevent the disasters that might occur when computing systems made the transition from 1999 to 2000 were carried out in a frenzy. The business cases behind them were not based on revenue upsides; instead, these projects were intended as protection against the risk of a negative impact on society.

In the case of many 20th-century legacy network elements, it will soon no longer be an option for operators to sweat these assets further. The trigger for investments in transformation projects is likely to be a change in perspective about what that transformation should deliver.

It’s not only about the fantastic scalability that Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) will deliver, it’s also about avoiding the limitations of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and the high opex that will be generated if operators have to use a variety of migration solutions.

As had been feared, the world did run out of IPv4 addresses last year. Companies that needed them had to buy them secondhand. Few other industries buy vital parts for their products and services on the grey market. More aggressive IPv6 transformation strategies will simplify IP networks over time.

It’s not only about transforming Plain Old Telephony Services (POTS) into multimedia communications– it’s also about being able to deliver basic voice services in 2015. Old telephony systems are reaching the end of their physical lifetimes. The necessary support staff are about to reach retirement age.

However, high-quality communication services remain as relevant as ever and will remain vital for the business of any service provider–and they’ll be a fully functional part of the Networked Society.

Since the 1980s, fiber has been touted as the access method of the future, but the trend is moving more toward a copper phase-out than a fiber overbuild. Opex savings can only be realized when the copper network has been phased out. When the two technologies exist in parallel, operators face what’s known as the double-opex dilemma. Looking forward, fiber will replace copper wherever economically feasible, but when it isn’t, radio could be the technology that replaces copper in other parts of the network.

In the future, I expect to see the following trends:

• Transformation strategies will replace the strategy of sweating your assets as the mainstream approach for dealing with legacy voice and data networks
• Copper-network phaseouts will be required to bringabout the full financial and societal benefits ofadvanced fiber and radio builds
• Network transformation projects will take about five to seven years and will be implemented in multiple stages, similar to the process of renovating a house room by room over many years
• Building the foundation is a long-term vision; it’s important to take a holistic approach to network architecture and to use transformation strategies that can be easily replicated.

Phenomenal Photography – Picture & Publish

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The first 10 years of mass-market digital photography have gone well thanks to innovations in mobile phones, single-lens reflex (SLR) and point-and-shoot cameras. The classic Kodachrome film has been discontinued. What can we expect from networked photography going forward?

Camera innovations have been phenomenal. Smartphones have made integrated photography and networking capabilities a great way of taking and sharing pictures –think Instagram. SLRs have managed the transition from film to memory with maintained or increased picture quality. Integrated HDTV (High-Definition TV) recording capabilities have turned SLRs into multi-purpose photography and filming devices. Point-and-shoot cameras have very high picture resolutions in combination with advanced optics at affordable prices.

The almost real-time publishing of our magic moments is a reality. It is an integrated part of the tools we use for sharing our lives. The darkroom and dark rooms are no longer required for viewing high-quality photos. Neither is the long wait for a roll of film to be processed. Our ability to share pictures, and share them instantly, is here to stay.

Post-production capabilities and their superior results are light-years ahead of the darkroom days. This is also the case for memory-storage innovations; the past decade has resulted in a 1,000-fold price-performance improvement and support for very high writing speeds. The revolution from 24 or 36 frame film rolls and the first 8-16MB memory cards feel very remote.

In the future, I expect to see the following trends:

  • High-resolution photographs and moving pictures will become key to the next wave of social-media innovations
  • Networking and camera capabilities will become more unified, and integrated WiFi and mobile access will become standard in SLRs and high-end point-and-shoot cameras
  • The camcorder will have a hard time surviving as a mass-market device, as cameras and smartphones come with integrated HDTV recording capabilities

Flatscreens find fantastic furniture fit

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Buying a TV was easy when it was all in one piece– when all you had to worry about was whether you should put it on a TV stand or hang it on the wall. But now innovation is being taken to the next level as key TV and audio technologies are being integrated with furniture, resulting in some interesting hybrid solutions.

As we move towards the Networked Society, technology-savvy products are being combined with products from other industries to form cross-industry solutions to everyday problems. This has been demonstrated with IKEA’snewUppleva (“experience”) solution, recently launched in Europe and scheduled for a US launch next year. With Uppleva, multimedia technology and furniture are combined in a way that ensures the product looks good both when it’s on and when it’s off . Cross-industry collaborations like this one are becoming increasingly important.

Today, creating a multimedia experience in your own home is often quite complex. Basically, you either need to be a genius or you have to get support from one to put it all together, even if you’ve bought all the components from the same store. The installation and service activation is the easiest part, the lifecycle management of the solution the more cumbersome part.. After a long day at work, who wants to take on this 24/7 role to keep their family connected? Pre-integrated solutions based on well-conceived platforms can simplify our lives a lot.

You can no longer wow your neighbor simply by buying an HD-quality flat TV. We now take it for granted that TVs come in almost any size we want, and at an affordable price. BluRay players and 7+1and 5+1 audio systems are amplifying the experience of today’s TV viewers. So are wireless access to subwoofers and loudspeakers, and today’s advanced storage and streaming solutions– not to mention the growing number of HD-capable recording devices. All of these additions serve the individual in the Networked Society as we become both producers and consumers of a new kind of home entertainment.

In the future, I expect to see the following trends:

  • Cross-industry innovation across historical industry borderlines will be the norm in the Networked Society
  • Large digital screens will continue to play a key role in delivering our multimedia experience, although we have reached the point where simply expanding the size of the TV is no longer enough
  • Manufacturers of full custom solutions and best-of-brand approaches are encountering competition from the makers of flexible holistic-solution offerings, in which the technology features are complemented with design, ease of use and life cycle management as key buying criteria. criteria

Scalable, Smart, Superior and Simple: Soon Society Standards

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Without a fully-fledged network, society and operators can’t reach their full potential. The network must be optimized to manage the enormous communications transformations taking place in society. And to achieve this, they will need to focus on four key attributes.

First, networks need to be scalable to support: traffic growth cost-efficiently; a growing amount of devices,  new types of them; and signaling to and from devices.

Second, networks need to be smart. Smartphones do not work well together with dumb pipes; and neither do other devices or services. Being smart allows networks to have differentiated connectivity options – and provides application programming interfaces with enhanced applications that have vital service attributes. A smart network is the foundation for delivering higher value to users and service providers. And business model innovation requires smart networks.

Third, networks need to deliver superior performance. As applications and services become more and more similar, superior network performance will be the key differentiator between operators, from a coverage and capacity perspective.

Finally, networks can be significantly simpler than they are today. In IP networks a lot of products are built with a single purpose. Tomorrow, a collection of single-purpose products will be consolidated into a more powerful, more capable multi-purpose product platform.

I believe that future networks  can be predicted as follows:
* Mobile applications will set the network evolution/architecture agenda.
* Triple-network integration will gain traction; in other words, 3G/4G/Wi-Fi will all become part of the same wireless access.
* Network transformation will take over from network transpiration as a primary network strategy. Sweating too many old network assets could be risky if and when the competition transforms its networks.
* With stronger network visions and business models, investment appetite will increase globally.

Networks Need New Nuances

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The enormous advancements in ICT, coupled with device innovation and mobile broadband, mean that everyone wants their industry to be networked. Broadband networks are making this possible, putting the “smart” in smart grid, smart transport, smart healthcare and so on.

Important considerations when connecting industries often have little to do with bandwidth, bits and bytes and more to do with attributes such as latency (delay), security, availability or upstream bandwidth.

Some networked industries are enabled by low latency and/or latency variation – for example, networked gaming. This involves playing games on tablets and smartphones over a mobile connection in addition to consoles and PCs with a fixed broadband connection. Another example is networked vehicles and applications that enable cars to communicate with each other in real time.

Other networked industries, such as those relating to national security and public safety, are enabled by very high network reliability and availability. Devices such as tablets and smartphones also require very high network reliability, as they are the primary tools of networked professionals who are expected to be connected at all times and locations throughout the working day.

Security or integrity is another attribute that is critical to many networked industries. It is particularly important in finance, in remote healthcare, and for sensitive government applications.

Finally, extended mobile broadband coverage is an enabler for most networked industries. Networked vehicles require 3G and 4G coverage over a broader geographical area than was previously anticipated. Meanwhile, expectations for improved indoor coverage in offices, campuses and so on are also higher than ever before.

Network evolution is necessary to support these new attributes, so they become evident to the user and form a new billing base.

My predictions for the future are:

  • As nuances of networking capability become more important, they will determine which industries can become fully networked – and the way in which this development occurs
  • A new element – positive service enhancement – will be added to today’s mainstream mobile-data connectivity options
  • The primary application for QoS mechanisms and policy-management capabilities will shift toward enhancements of premium apps.

The broadband freeway is here – but broadband speed bumps are required to manage traffic peaks. The next topic up for debate is broadband tolls. They will definitely be necessary, but how and where can we build them? A premium can be charged for valuable networked-industry applications if the network has the right attributes or capabilities.

Baby Boomers Barely Build Brand

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Baby boomers are digital immigrants

Social media – how can baby boomers use it professionally?

On May 18, the IPO of Facebook came at a valuation of $108B. If you’re a babyboomer like me, you might wonder how this event will impact your future career. Until about six months ago, I represented most baby boomers– I was using one social-media tool for friends and family life and keeping the content private, and one tool to boost my professional appearance by pushing my contact list above the magic 500-contact borderline.

As baby boomers, we are digital immigrants. We have embraced digital devices like mobile phones and tablets. But we  still text using one finger and struggle to keep up with the abbreviations our kids use, such as “KWIM?” (“know what I mean?”) We tend to want to separate our social-media interactions into a professional and a private sphere. Few of us have started to explore the use of social media to extend our sphere of professional influence beyond just the people we have met in person at least once. And when we have met them once, we tend to stay in touch by e-mail rather than through the use of social media. Most of us are now comfortable communicating with the 160-character SMS/TXT format, but we struggle with, for example, the 140-character format used on Twitter, where posts always begin with the # symbol.

Finding out your personal impact score in any of the major social-media impact tools is a good way to get an idea of where you stand. It’s normally enough of a motivator to be a call for action. You can start by just reading posts on Twitter to get a feeling for what’s going on. And don’t forget to learn from your screen-agers (teenagers). They know what makes an impact and what does not– and you have an edge when it comes to understanding what it all means from a business perspective.

My predictions for baby boomers are:

  • Learning social-media skills for professional purposes will be vital to ensure that we will still be attractive on the labor market in five years’ time.
  • Having a decent social-media impact score is already a must for people who are being hired for marketing positions, but the trend is likely to expand to to all customer facing roles and management positions within 3-5 years..
  • We will have to let go of our ambition of perfection. We will inevitably make mistakes on the path to establishing our digital personalities, and these mistakes are part of our individual journeys.