Are 5G and Super bundling going to save the telecoms sector? It looks like these two technologies – along with AI and conversational commerce – are poised to revolutionise business comms, consumer habits and how we all interact.
For the telemedia sector, this is a massive fillip. Super Bundling not only gives telcos a place at the mainstream content table, but it also pushes carrier billing further up the payment charts. This can only be good news for MNOs, aggregators and payment providers.
Likewise, the rise of AI and conversational commerce will drive a surge in messaging and data traffic that both MNOs and SPs will benefit from. Already, many of the leading players in the telemedia space, such as HORISEN and Infobip, are capitalising on this move.
Much of this development will be underpinned by 5G, which continues to roll out at pace worldwide and has the potential to elevate not only messaging and conversational commerce, but offers a variety of new opportunities around content delivery – not least helping facilitate Super Bundling strategies. No wonder then that the Vodafone Three merger – and the promised investment in 5G – continues to attract so much attention.
And as the Summer ‘recess’ approaches – we at telemedia towers are heading off to our Zen retreats around the world for a couple of weeks in August – this all leaves the telemedia sector in surprisingly rude health. While the cost-of-living crisis, war, high inflation, searing temperatures and flagging consumer retail spending all loom on the horizon like the dark smoky shadows from the wildfires that consume Europe’s grass lands, there is much to be hopeful about in our industry at least in the second half of 2023.
Some light holiday reading
- The Metaverse Almanac 2022 – just how retail is using the metaverse and where it goes next
- The Role of 5G in driving the metaverse – where 5G is going and why it is essential to the metaverse
- Conversational Everything – how AI and conversational commerce make everything a consumer channel
- AI and OTT content delivery – how AI is revolutionising how OTT platforms deliver content
The surge in interest in 5G that we have covered in recent weeks – inspired by the proposed Vodafone-Three merger in the UK, but gathering pace worldwide – has focussed much attention on how this network technology really does offer some amazing benefits for users and that, after a slow start, is now starting to appear. It also offers telcos themselves some transformative opportunities.
Super Bundling is just one of them. The ability to tap into the streaming content market is most welcomed by MNOs – it gives them a seat at a table that they have long coveted – but 5G offers way more than that. It offers the chance to create new services that go above and beyond what streamers can offer and positions telcos at the jumping off point to be pivotal in the delivery and creation of the metaverse. If you think of the metaverse not as something that happens in headsets and is still very much in the future, but more as a different way of accessing web content, then 5G sets MNOs and SPs up nicely to deliver a new experience of everything online.
This isn’t to be sniffed at. This is the future, it will be how the web is interacted with and telcos need to be ready.
The evolution of AI and conversational commerce – and the messaging that drives that – is also part of this world. It may be hard to see it right now, but the levels of interaction generated through conversational commerce today are what will drive the desire to interact in a deeper way through this metaverse approach to the web in the years ahead.
We are already building a world of engagement and interaction, the metaverse just takes this to the next level. The lessons learned today in conversational commerce and messaging will underpin this shift – and again places telcos and telemedia companies in position to ride this new wave.
So, as we pack for our holidays, it is worth looking ahead to your next major trip – to World Telemedia Marbella on 9-10 October, where all this and more will be under the spotlight and will, offer the place where the discussions that will create this future will take place. See you there.
