BANGALORE, INDIA: For the telecoms industry, few decades can match the ‘noughties’ for the pace of change we have witnessed. 

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The Internet has matured and completely revolutionised the way people live and work, while copper voice networks have given way to converged optical fibre networks carrying voice and data at ever-faster speeds. 

As Ethernet increasingly takes its place as a utility, social networking is influencing the dynamic of communication and converged communications solutions, transforming the way global organisations operate, network service providers find themselves standing on the cusp of a brave new world.

Cable&Wireless Worldwide believes the next ten years will be every bit as exciting as the preceding ten. A number of trends will play a major role in the next decade, from online identity management to the ways in which fixed mobile convergence (FMC) developments will increasingly enable single device working.

Traditionally businesses have led the way in communications innovation. Previously a significant investment, larger firms alone had the need for leading edge communications not to mention the finance required to pay for it.

However, as we’ve already seen to some extent with the likes of Twitter and Facebook, businesses now follow where the consumer market leads. This will be compounded by a rise in independent software developers and increasing access to software leading to greater numbers of ‘weekend-developers’ eager to resolve issues with a DIY solution.

Even today, the next generation of office workers see many of the tools we use on a daily basis as obsolete. Email is now being supplemented with communication through multiple consumer-facing social networking sites and instant messaging platforms and they are embracing concepts such as presence (indicating the availability of people on a network) almost instinctively on both fixed and mobile devices. 

In addition, multi-platform, real-time collaborative tools such as Google Wave are changing the way these users share information and resolve problems. This generation now expects this multi-channel approach to communication be taken into the office and businesses that embrace these new channels of communication will benefit from increased productivity, improved efficiency and collaboration.

Communication channels will be location and device independent as they’ll be mapped to the employee and will be carried to whichever technology is in use at the time, whether that is a phone handset or a soft client on a laptop. Social media and instant messaging platforms will evolve into an online business environment where multiple users can seamlessly communicate and collaborate across a variety of media, increasing productivity and speeding up the completion of projects.

In the same way that the access location will become unimportant, we will see the concept of a physical office become increasingly irrelevant during the teens. Devices carried by an individual will be dual purpose – meaning that they will serve for both consumer and corporate usage as required. Devices such as BlackBerry smartphones have already started this trend, but we will see this grow exponentially over the decade. 

Laptops, for instance, will become much lighter as hard-drives are replaced by chips which can route to the corporate or consumer cloud as desired by the user. In addition, a wave of new connected devices such as the recently announced iPad are likely to impact the way consumers and professionals consume content on the move.

Employees already have the ability to work from virtually any location. This ability will be extended during the decade and the performance of remote networking will increase as 4G mobile networks become commonplace, allowing employees to access high-speed broadband wirelessly and anywhere.

FMC will reach tipping point and we could eventually see the end of the desk phone. By enabling employees to be contacted via one number, regardless of location means increased response rates for customers and a more flexible way of working. 

This is not to say that the office will disappear altogether. The face-to-face contact an office provides encourages collaboration and is essential for building a cohesive company culture.  We will, however, see greater flexibility and choice entering the workplace and the lines between home and office will blur even further, depending on individual preference and business requirements. 

The way businesses consume broadband within the office (defined as the network of employees, wherever they may be) will also change dramatically.  In developed regions, broadband will become a commodity and will plummet in price.  The route to success will involve businesses making the best use of the networks they have available to them. For example, Application Performance Management will increasingly allow businesses to analyse network usage and make more efficient use of existing bandwidth rather than simply investing in more capacity.

In addition, consolidating providers to a single supplier of telecoms, or investing in high bandwidth networks that allow for powerful applications such as Managed Video Conferencing and Telecoms Expense Management will offer a route to reduced costs while enabling innovation, address the green agenda and position companies more favourably in their markets.

Developing markets will see broadband offered on an on-demand basis.  This will allow them to request additional broadband resource for peak times; ensuring business operations are at their most effective when they are most needed.  This flex-up and flex-down approach will provide businesses with a uniquely tailored broadband environment. 

The result of these changes is that relationships between businesses and telecoms operators will become more important. With a wider variety of communications services layered across the network and offered over the Cloud, businesses will need to trust their communications providers in a way never seen before. 

It is up to the telecoms industry to ensure that it offers reliable and secure solutions which enable more innovative working practices than today and operators that manage to do this successfully will prosper in the new telecoms landscape.

The author is Director of Enterprise Sales (India) at Cable&Wireless Worldwide.