Dario Betti, Mobile Ecosystem Forum
Everyone hopes every year will be better than the last. One way to improve the chances of this happening is accurate forecasting. I asked several members of the Board of Directors at The Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) to share their predictions for the mobile industry in 2023.
1. Mobile operators offering new identity services – Jason Lunn, MEF Board Member, and Global Connectivity, CPaaS at Cisco
Currently, mobile operators are really struggling to find ways to grow their revenues beyond traditional services: voice, SMS and data. Yet, one asset mobile operators can monetise is mobile identity.
Over the coming year, I expect we will see a breakout of systems whereby enterprise can query mobile operators to verify a customer’s age, address, credit status, etc. This information is known and verified by mobile operators to establish a contract, and it is tied to a unique number: a phone number. So, phone numbers could become the unique identifier to verify all this information.
It will be interesting to see how enterprise will take all those pieces of information and use it to formulate an opinion on a customer that can be used and monetised. It would make things much easier for customers – rather than filling out forms and completing Know Your Customer (KYC) data, they could simply link their mobile number. In turn, this would also be very helpful to businesses.
2. Reverse brain drain – Anurag Aggarwal, MEF Board Member, and VP Partnership and Alliances at Tanla
The global West has been the dominant market for technology. But with the shift in digital transformation due to lockdown, the workforce is being redistributed, both between different organisations as well as geographic locations.
Take India. As a developing nation, India has often had to align foreign and economic policy with the West. But India has roughly a sixth of the global population. Prime Minister Modi has recognised this economic potential and, over the past three years, has established a very successful program to make India a self-contained economy.
As a result, I see 2023 bringing a reverse brain drain. Given the opportunities available, especially in the technology and the telecom space, a lot of that talent which moved out of India to the likes of US and UK is likely to move back over the coming years.
One effect of this will be that India will begin dominating the overall tech space and we will see more of Indians innovating solutions for India rather than for the global West.
Other countries may also follow suit. China and African nations are key areas to look out for. With their huge populations and greater access to technology and information, China and Africa could well become the tech powerhouses of the future.
3. Conversational AI will grow rapidly – Waheed Adam, MEF Board Member and executive chairperson at iTouch
In the coming year, we will see a huge shift in Rich Communication Services (RCS), with many more enterprises having conversations with their customers rather than a one-way unilateral communication.
Brands are already slowly evolving into a more human-like entity. Even on social media, brands are almost emulating human behaviour to the world at large, which helps them embody their value systems. It also helps showcase their offerings as a human salesperson would, conversing with their end consumers in that same tonality.
With the rapid development in Conversational AI, powered by Conversational Process Automation (CPA), artificial intelligence can bridge the gap between the customer and process automation systems by automating both conversations and processes.
So, a business could launch a WhatsApp channel, showcase their items, and then allow customers to converse with an online AI salesperson to ask questions and complete their purchase.
The power of Conversational AI can be combined with breakthrough innovative payment technology, such as Unified Payment Interface (UPI), to allow customers to make bank payments instantaneously via their mobile number.
So, not only can customers browse through a carousel of products and talk to a sales AI, but they can even select the items, put them in a cart, and make the online payment transaction through WhatsApp. There is no need to step out of the WhatsApp ecosystem onto an external website. Everything is available end-to-end.
This is a powerful process and adds a lot of value to OTT services like WhatsApp and its regional equivalents. It brings omnichannel processes into a single channel, joining up the user’s journey on their behalf.
4. Blockchain will take centre stage – Anurag Aggarwal, MEF Board Member, and VP Partnership and Alliances at Tanla
Blockchain is mainly known as the technology behind cryptocurrencies. However, the blockchain is a distributed public ledger of information and, as such, has vast potential applications beyond cryptocurrencies; healthcare and telecom have started using blockchain in a big way to help ensure the veracity and transparency of data.
Take, for example, a Cost per Acquisition (CPA) ecosystem, where the messages from the enterprise to the end user (and vice versa) go through a lot of hoops. Enterprises need to ensure complete traceability and visibility of the entire chain, but that poses certain challenges from both a security and data privacy perspective. So, by using blockchain, organisations can ensure a better flow of information, transparency of data, and end-to-end visibility of information across all levels.
In India, there is the distributed ledger technology regulation, which remains the world’s largest blockchain use case. Over 40 billion transactions every month go through the blockchain just because of this regulation in India.
So, with more regulation providing assurance for enterprise, blockchain will be increasingly used in several applications, such as managing end-to-end visibility of Call Detail Records (CDR) and enhancing data privacy.
Over the coming year, I expect we will see a lot more blockchain technologies out there but a bit less of a focus on digital currencies.
5. The challenge of globalisation – Jason Lunn, MEF Board Member, and Global Connectivity, CPaaS at Cisco
To ensure the security and standards across globalised technology, we need an alignment of policies. Yet, with the growth in tech dominance in India, China and Africa, this alignment is shifting out of the hands of the global West.
The traditional idea of globalisation was free trade across the world. Yet, new technology is no longer an issue for the consumer market, it has become an issue of national security. In the telecoms industry the tech infrastructure is now national infrastructure, and in countries like the US and UK, governments have specifically limited technology developed in China due to concerns around trust and security.
So, the interconnected digital world is not aligning with the increasingly disconnected political world, and I think that will lead to some major challenges.
Over the next few years, governments are going to understand how important the players within the connectivity ecosystem are and how they play a key role within critical national infrastructure.
I expect this to lead to greater government subsidies to help telecoms businesses make their technology and security more robust and/or more regulation around security to help protect this critical national infrastructure.
6. Mobile industry will need to become more sustainable – Jason Lunn, MEF Board Member, and Global Connectivity, CPaaS at Cisco
Unfortunately, the mobile industry is a major contributor to global carbon emissions, with 3.5% of global CO2 emissions deriving from telecoms – that is double the amount from aviation. With the telecom industry growing very healthy, the amount of emissions will also grow, unless things change.
One thing that mobile operators can do to become more sustainable is to ensure that their code base is as efficient as possible. That could mean using more advanced programming languages — like Closure — that require fewer lines of code, reducing the amount of computer power that’s required.
This can be more difficult for older players in the market as they will have a lot of legacy code and servers to update. But as new players enter the market with more efficient technology, sustainability will suddenly become a competitive advantage. So, big players need to investigate sustainability and efficiency now to prepare for that coming future.
We also need a clear standard and benchmark for measuring CO2 efficiencies. If we reduce the computer power needed, how much CO2 have we actually saved? This would make it easier for enterprise to prioritise efficiencies that lead to greater sustainability.
There is a lot of focus on sustainability and CO2 reduction at every level – from the UN to the US tax code. I think we will begin to see the fruits of that labour over the next year or so, with new legislation bringing clear benchmarks and responsibilities for the industry, and we need to be preparing for that change now.
