How Will Communications Technology Be Transformed in the Next 10 Years?

“The communications technology will continue to focus on mobility and customization for all end users. Therefore, wireless, in any network will garner attention.”

— Philip Josephson, Founder, the Law Office of Philip Josephson

“Technology in 10 years will be about the integration of video into daily communications. We have the beginning of this today with higher-end telepresence-type solutions. Have you ever seen anyone on Star Trek making a landline telephone call? Video communications coupled with mobility will be the way our children communicate. In addition, I expect improvements in mobile device form-factors facilitated by unrollable/foldable screen technology. This will allow the mobile device to morph into a personal computer at will.”

— Steve Hilton, Enterprise Research, Analysys Mason

“Everything will be CRM-based and in the cloud. Nothing will any longer be manual process. Google wins the game!”

— Vince Bradley, CEO, World Telecom Group

“More services will be offered over broadband/IP connection, which will help in reducing costs and introduce more unified applications like presence detection, IM, video conferencing and cellular integration. All of [these] will drive communication applications. In addition, software as a service will be considered the norm for the masses. (Driven by higher bandwidth speeds delivered over multiple options both wired and wireless.)”

— Dan DiOrio, President, TelcoPro USA Inc.

“That is hard to say, but it is a safe bet it will be IP-based. To me, the bigger question is how will society and businesses get access to communications technology? If companies like Google have their way, communications may become an application with costs driven down based on our willingness to share information about ourselves and our behaviors. I really believe you will see this type of model evolve over the next decade in the consumer and wireless space. Corporate networks, on the other hand, will continue to evolve, but the model in which these services are purchased will continue to be the same.”

— Brad Miehl, President & CEO, MicroCorp Inc.

“Fiber, fiber and fiber. Also, MPLS and other means of converged technology. Starting with fiber, bandwidth and access needs have grown exponentially and will continue to do so. Fiber has been proven to be an amazing 'future-proof' medium. The same fiber in place across the ocean and in networks all over the world started at far slower speeds. Suddenly they develop lasers that pulse light faster or utilize different spectrums of light, and speed increases. The fiber never changed ... they just pulled the old lasers off and put on the new ones at the ends. Fiber and related equipment/technology will become more of the standard. While fiber itself can handle as much as 14tbps, readily available commercial equipment started at 45mbps and kept increasing to now where the relatively recent 2.5gbps option is being skipped by most carriers and large customers for the newly developed 10gbps that came out so shortly thereafter. With such large capacities available and such new technologies such as 3D HD television at as much as 2.5gbps ... we will start to see the old copper and even Ethernet over copper start to disappear as fiber spreads farther out.