Predictions 2020: Top ten telecom trends

Kevin Riley, CTO of Ribbon Communications, has put together his top ten telecoms predictions for 2020 and beyond. They are given below.

From virtualisation to cloudification: We've begun transforming networks, now what? The next year will see us look to cloud-native functions with distributed clouds from the core to the edge. We’ll see the evolution of virtualisation and the even faster move to cloudification with less risk than ever before.

From SD-WAN to SDN: SD-WANs are a transitional technology. New paradigms are emerging, flattening networks and simplifying them, designing them using software (rather than having to engineer them in traditional terms), and managing them with point-and click secure portals that will enable provisioning of endpoints in minutes.

Addressing challenges at the far edge of the network: 5G deployments have begun, but have we fully considered and solved security, increased traffic and performance at the edge? 2020 will see developments in helping us do that.

Rise of automated systems in the RTC world: How analytics, machine-learning and artificial intelligence will be deployed to make networks and applications more secure, efficient and profitable via better customer experiences.

From smart homes to smart buildings, from smart factories to smart cities: We’ll see a lot of practical innovations changing how we live and improve our lives.

Beyond contact centres: The real game in 2020 will be putting customer choice at the centre of customer experience. We’ll see the evolution from "contact centres" to “customer experience centres".

Why SBCs will never be the same: There is no turning back from SBC-as-a-Service (SBCaaS) and that's great news for businesses of every size.

Unified communications is about to turn an important corner: We’ll see UCaaS adoption rates soar in 2020. We’ll also see communications platforms move beyond experimentation and proof of concept in 2020.

Living on the Edge: We’ll see security that scales and enables real time applications that soar (the new voice security stack). With the proliferation of devices, from smartphones to smart doorbells and connected cars that come with broadband built in, there is limitless opportunity for creative innovation.

Aren’t those Robocalls annoying? In 2020 we’ll see network intelligence and applications to help fight this rising menace.