Top 4 telecom trends to look out for in 2023

Today, as we move through a turbulent operating environment, carriers are updating their plans. Their inventiveness for digital transformation is becoming more ambitious and broader in scope.During the course of the upcoming year , which is expected to be a choppy one, Telecom service providers (TSPs) won't certainly be completely immune. To counter this, businesses are striving to accelerate innovation and digital transformation. Here we highlight some of the factors, the telecom industry will be most influenced by in 2023.

Cybersecurity and Adaptability

Network operators will need to take all necessary precautions to protect themselves from cyberattacks and volatile market environment in 2023 since it is now more crucial than ever. As cyber-threats increase, telcos are finding it difficult to keep up with the proliferation of cyber-threats. A large number of users are of the opinion that it is impracticable to protect their personal information online while it won't be incorrect to mention that the telecom industry lacks sufficient proper security considerations taken into account while making strategic investments.

Even while using various technologies and approaches it is necessary to take into consideration both cyber-threats and volatile market state as both are crucial for making sure a firm is truly resilient and prepared for the future.

Methods of Operation and Upskilling of Labour

With the introduction of 5G the demand and supply gap of skilled and upskilled labour has also widened. Workforce rebalancing is a major concern that the telcos are expected to face over the next 12 months and as a result immense pressure is formed in the talent pipeline. The rapid march-of new-age technologies has triggered a talent demand but at the same time with every new technology the supply –demand gap of skilled manpower is increasing.

We will see an increasing adoption of the ‘outsourced’ model from CSPs to meet their immediate need. When major OEMs will naturally gravitate towards their core areas of strength, a whole ecosystem of companies with specific strengths in relatively narrow specialization will try to fill the gap. How will Telecom industry be dealing with this gap is something to watch out for.

Standalone (SA) 5G

Although 5G has been the hype for some time, and with major telcos introducing their 5G services rapidly across the country, one thing that must not be forgotten is that the majority of services provided by Telecom operators do not utilise a stand alone implementation of the 5G technology, instead use non-stand alone infrastructure depending on current 4G (LTE) infrastructure. This indicates that it is highly unlikely that consumers are utlising it to its fullest ability. The transition to stand-alone 5G is next to watch out for in the next stage in deployment of 5G.

Many intriguing improvements and capabilities that 5G is proficient of, including network slicing, are expected to really take off at this point, in the view of analysts. The only telco in the country that chose to deploy Stand-alone 5G is Reliance Jio.

Cloud Adoption

Telecom service providers are expected to carry on realizing the advantages of transferring crucial IT framework to the cloud, as oposed to turning on more private data centres. Additionally, clod adoption allows for the speedy introduction of new services to the market and their testing to gauge user acceptance without suffering significant financial losses owing to infrastructure costs if they aren't instantly extremely well-liked, which will become more helpful; as the competition to construct 5G services picks up speed.

W can anticipate this to grow in the upcoming year as telecoms develop services to support 5G and edge computing applications through cloud platforms.