According to Telecoms.com Annual Industry Report, the industry is predominantly happy with telecom’s business performance in 2022 as 63% vote for an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ year.
The newly published report takes stock of the industry’s performance over this year, as well as the views of the professionals participating in the survey on the outlook of 2023 and beyond. A general sense of optimism and achievement comes through as 63% of respondents believe that the business performance of telecoms in 2022 has been ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ while also reaching consensus on a positive outlook for next year.
The survey goes on to investigate the Covid-19 response-adaptation-recovery. The general consensus is that the pandemic recovery is under control as the report reveals that nearly half of respondents believe the telecoms industry will either bounce back stronger than pre-Covid-19 years, driven by pent-up demand or that the post-pandemic view will be mostly business as usual.
Zooming in on key telco priority investment areas for next year, the survey report states that Security, Digital Transformation, IoT, and Broadband will be the top four areas for telecom businesses in 2023. Drilling further down into telco technology, 5G standalone core is identified as having a materially positive impact on the wider adoption of 5G. Nonetheless, high costs in network equipment and network deployment are still seen as the biggest key challenge for deploying standalone 5G.
Other challenges identified with regards to broadband network and service automation include legacy infrastructure and siloed operations across technologies. Lack of skills and resources is also flagged as a key barrier to the deployment of IoT and also Open RAN technologies.
In terms of emerging services and technologies, Metaverse is identified with 60% as the most hyped emerging technology while more than half of respondents also view it as ‘not commercially interesting’. Meanwhile, the survey reports that more than four in five telecom professionals find video delivery as key for telecom businesses, including a third who consider it ‘top priority’.
On the whole, the results present a hopeful and positive backdrop for 2023. While the survey also recognises several challenges that continue to exist, both on the technology but also operational side of things, it also captures key opportunity areas for telecoms businesses to improve on efficiencies, which in light of a global economic crisis currently on the rise in many parts of the world, is especially relevant.
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