Virtualization and Edge Computing to unleash the future of Digital Infrastructure

India is progressing to become a $1trillion digital economy by 2025 which will require transformation in digital infrastructure on a massive scale. While India has taken big strides over the years on digital enablement, what could really help in empowering digital India is 5G. 5G network, a breakthrough of technology, is now a reality across the globe to meet the increasing demand of low-latency applications, Radio Access Network (RAN) infrastructure and multi-access cloud services. However, telecom industry is witnessing an evolution of virtualization through AI and IOT. Eventually, this can drive the Telcos to reap the rewards of enterprise cooperation through unfolding their potentials of virtualization.

5G to drive Digital Transformation

Last 12-15 months have been a period of challenge with the devastating impact of COVID, pandemic taking a toll on livelihood. Amidst such chaos, one thing has happened is the dramatic acceleration of digital adoption where most of the businesses are running through digital channels. Due to the spectacular investment by digital infrastructure players to take internet across the country, enormous opportunity has been created for digital businesses in India across the spectrum. This resulted in the 500 thousand villages being connected by 4G and a spike in the average consumption of a user in a month closely to 13.7 gigabyte. With the advent of 5G, Open Radio access network, a new technology to disintermediate the hardware and software is coming to focus. This will improve the customer experience- which is intensifying the interests of TELCOS in making investments and required partnerships for ORAN. For this, B2B opportunity is ripe for development- where virtualization and the cloud are playing pivotal role in their approach to enterprise customers in offering comprehensive, flexible, and scalable services. Data centers is proving to be another promising opportunity in digital infrastructure space to read virtualization containers of TELCO. Digital Infrastructure industry is poised for transformation to deliver value by achieving ubiquitous connectivity.

Changing Trend in Usage of Data and Spike in Data Traffic

The transformation pace in telecom industry over the years has raised manifold. TELCOS have been the unsung backbone of the fight against economic paralysis due to COVID-19. The last decade has witnessed an unprecedented growth in network traffic where India’s consumption rates have seen a steady increase over the years. Nokia’s annual Mobile Broadband India Traffic Index (MBiT) report says that there was a whopping 60% jump in the overall data traffic in India in last 5 years which translates to 13.7 GB a month per user and is driven by 4G consumption. Required agility during COVID-19 and spike in usage of next gen digital platforms or OTT platforms have led to the surge of average data traffic per user by 20.4% in 2020 due to the increase in data subscribers. This called for a new wave of digital services which are ‘content-driven’ and required high-speed internet at the helm to live up to the millennials expectations and bandwidth demand that skyrocketed with the emergence of each OTT player in the market.

Orchestration of Infra and Intelligence

The trend of more people and machines being connected at an exponential rate is leading path for intelligent infra to drive the future of connectivity. It drives connectivity and DI players are required to upgrade their infrastructure to harp on data. The edge computing for TELCO payloads doesn’t only call for innovation but also involves development of a proven and sustainable business model. Operating model is expected to be underpinned by systems and data that provides perspectives both forest & leaf level view of digital infrastructure players. Intelligent Networks will catalyze multiple use cases, modify use cases digitalization which will unlock huge value. Looking at the future potentials of virtualization in telecom market space, the companies are revamping their business models by creating a unified solution which is robust, scalable, and ubiquitous.

Innovation to Acceleration

iBus Networks is innovating in five points- openness, flexibility and scalability, on-demand, self-managed services, speed, and new business models, to transform digital ecosystem.

Views expressed in this article are the personal opinion of Pramod Goel, SVP of iBus Networks and Enakshi Pal Mukherjee, Sr. Lead Corporate Communication.