How technology will be able to guide our lives in the future

Over the last decade, technology has changed the way we live and work. Instant connectivity is expected, and a smart mobile device is always within an arm’s reach.

We’ve seen huge advancements over the past two decades: in 2000, undersea fibre cables delivered speeds of 2 Giga bits per second (Gbps). Today we’re looking at 100 Gbps. Now, more than ever, speed is the name of the game.

We’ve already seen personal connectivity speeds take centre stage this year, with 5G emerging as the main topic at Mobile World Congress. Smartphones have driven the connectivity revolution thus far, but in 2017 we’re standing on the cusp of a whole new connectivity crunch.

Today there are over 3 billion internet users globally, but, more importantly, Gartner predicts that this year the number of connected devices will rise to 8.4 billion –building blocks for the Internet of Things (IoT).

There has been huge buzz around IoT, and its potential effect on our daily lives. We’re already seeing advancements in the IoT space – from connected homes to connected cars – but the real success of the infrastructure will rely on the devices’ ability to talk to each other, and deliver their insights to the consumer in one convenient location.

For example, your phone’s GPS tells you that the journey to your client meeting tomorrow will take 20 minutes. What it doesn’t tell you is that parking spaces are scarce at your destination, so you should build in an extra 15 minutes to find somewhere to stop. If these two applications were connected, you’d have all of this information in one application that you can access in the palm of your hand.

Personal assistant tools like Alexa and Google Home are already starting to make these connections, but there is still a long way to go. For example you can tell Alexa to turn the music on or turn on the lights, but you can’t say “Alexa when the music gets romantic, turn the lights down” because that would require it to communicate with, and be able to analyse, your music library.

All this convergence is bound to change our approach to life, but it can’t happen overnight. In fact, there’s likely to be more industry earthquakes like we’ve seen in the mobile space to make this a complete reality. Just as we’ve seen network speeds evolve over the last two decades, new developments like 5G will continue to push the pace of technological development.

The convergence and consolidation of platforms and devices will enable humans and machines to interact in a more seamless, streamlined way than ever before. And it’s clear that the future of the digital world lies in the billions of these connected devices and how they all interact with each other. Creating that world where all networks and applications work harmoniously together to give people this ubiquitous ultra-connected experience is a task we in the industry are ready to tackle together.

With the pace of change accelerating, why not look back at the past 15 years of Tata Communications, with this blog post by Vinod Kumar?