For those of us who are passionate about broadband, 2022 was truly unprecedented. Productivity was in hyper-drive as a record number of new applications emerged that pushed the need for faster and better broadband performance. Governments globally continued to step-up with subsidies to help roll out hyper-fast broadband services to bridge the digital divide and upgrade communications networks; while supplementary private capital also ramped-up its availability for broadband service provider investment.
Given this springboard, 2023 will be a year of accelerated change buoyed by a generational upgrade cycle. 10 Gigabit Passive Optical Networking (PON) and 5G software-driven networks will be the networks of choice.
To address this confluence of drivers, service providers will have to rethink not only how they architect their networks, but how and where they choose to invest in their infrastructure and operations. Strategic transformation will be paramount, and the speed of change will determine who the winners and losers will be in the long run.
There are a handful of significant trends that will emerge over the next several months as service providers navigate their transformation and seek to find their Competitive EDGE. In this two-part series, I will explore some of these trends. Part 1 will focus on the increasing shift to multi-gigabit services, the growing importance of the network edge and how service providers are being transformed into “experience providers”.
In Part 2 of this blog , I will highlight the increased strategic value of in-place network upgrades, how hardened coherent optics are redefining the economics of optical transport, how Artificial Intelligence (AI)will play an increasingly pivotal role in optimizing both network efficiency and the subscriber experience and why the Open RAN (O-RAN) movement will continue to gain steam.