By Carmel De Rosario 01 Feb 2018
The Telecom industry in the United Kingdom is all but steady.
Especially with the huge increase in the use of smart phones, of which, stats
show seven out of ten people own, and increased data service usage which
includes a good 46 percent 4G data service usage in the year 2015, which now
means that the internet has taken over a major chunk in the telecommunications
sphere.
What was the
scenario of the telecom sector in the past- 2015-16?
In terms of what has occurred in the past, which is in 2016,
we are aware that there has been a 64 percent increase in mobile data traffic
and even home and small businesses internet services had gone up 40 percent.
Even the speed of the data increased to 30Mbit/s for 42 percent of total data
usage in 2015.
Because of the boom of the internet, other telecommunication
sources have spiraled downwards. In 2016, especially because of the excessive
use of internet data in the form of apps like Whatsapp, Viber, and IM’s to
voice connect to people, telecom carriers were struggling to keep up and fell
as far little as 15 percent in roaming, 20 percent in international voice and
30 percent in SMS. And this small amount kept on decreasing owing to minimal
revenue growth per user and margins declining nature.
In 2017, there have been further developments simply
following the same thread of trends in 2016. Using the internet for all
businesses is a norm and so internet applications are growing rapidly,
especially for businesses. For advertising, Augmented Reality apps are a
growing field. The growth of IoT means that there is a connection of a variety
of smart devices using the internet especially using the smart phone whereof usage
has now increased to more than 75 percent of UK population owning a smart
phone. In every sector of telecommunication, IoT is bound to spread what with
our need to always be connected especially because of improved battery lives of
smart phones.
For landlines the battle goes on, the Session Initiation
Protocol or SIP along with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is beating down
ISDN.
Even for data and broadband connections, although not many
areas in the UK have a strong fibre broadband connection, live streaming videos
and watching TV shows on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu online, is huge in
comparison to regular Television cable connections usage. BT has announced that
they will begin pilots for Fire to the Premise (FTTP) to businesses but only 2
percent of premises have this technology installed.
What does
2018 have in store for the UK? Here are the predictions made for the
Telecommunications sector..
This is the most exciting part of the industry, looking at
what we can expect to learn from the rest of Europe and the world in terms of
growing our Telecommunications sector in the UK. These are the expected trends
in this year 2018..
·
UK Smart phone usage to increase to 85 percent.
·
5G trials
·
IoT applications
·
AI and AR involved in all kinds of applications-
mobile and web.
·
5 year investment in 100 percent Business rate relief for
Fibre Broadband.
·
Plans for 95 percent of UK premises have the ability
to be able to buy speedy broadband- 24Mbps.
· WiFi connections on flights will grow by 20 percent.