What will you cover at the Vodafone Business Conference?
I’m going to look at the whole notion of hyperconnectivity and where we will use this technology in the future. I’m a futurist and I’ve been involved in technology all my life. For the last 40 years I have worked for telecommunications companies, so I have seen all the ‘G’s, from 1G to 5G. I want to inspire people about the transformative power of hyperconnectivity.
I will look at IoT, AI, 5G, 6G, even satellites. In recent weeks, Amazon changed the name of its satellite company from Kuiper to Leo and is now competing with Starlink. The notion of connectivity anywhere, at any speed, at any time is something that I think will drive businesses, not just consumers. I’m going to talk about this opportunity generated by being connected, not just humans but the Internet of Things. We will see billions of things that will have to be connected in the near future.
Do you consider that we are already in a hyperconnected world or are we headed there in the next five years?
It’s for the next five years. If we walk down the street and don’t get a Wi-Fi signal and we complain, that’s not hyperconnectivity.
Hyperconnectivity is when the end user does not have to worry about the method they are using to connect to the outside world. And the user can be a human being, an autonomous vehicle looking for a place to park or sneakers that come across others and want to talk to them and ask where they were purchased. We’re not there yet. Technology is getting better and better, satellites are meeting the last frontier where we can be anywhere and be connected. But I’m in a hotel in Warsaw and the Wi-Fi is a little unstable, and this is not hyperconnectivity. It’s hyperfrustration.
Do you believe that the hyperconnected world will be geographically homogeneous or could it deepen differences?
I think this reduces inequality. With Starlink and Amazon Leo we will have underprivileged communities being able to install a very small satellite dish and have access to the Internet that they didn’t have before.
We are moving towards being able to walk down the street with our cell phone and if it is not connected to a Wi-Fi network and does not have a 5G signal, it can connect via satellite.
Despite the cost, because it is not cheap to provide satellite services, I believe we will see that communities will have access to the internet anywhere in the world.
What should companies do to ensure they succeed in this new era?
They need to look at how they’re providing connectivity, whether it’s to remote workers or if they have a factory how they ensure that devices talk to each other. This ubiquitous connectivity is what they need to do, almost an audit of how they are at the moment. How do we connect things, people or servers?
The AI boom will require connectivity because we will want to have access to an AI tool or agent anywhere in the world.
The demand for these services will require this connectivity. That’s why companies must carry out an audit to understand how they connect today and whether they are preparing for the future.
Is that what you’re going to talk about at the conference?
I talk about this in part in the book I wrote, ‘Digitally Curious’, and I’m going to talk about it in Lisbon. Unless we are curious we will not be aware of these new services. I’m going to talk about things like ‘edge computing’, the fact that if we have an autonomous vehicle we want a computer to make the decision as close as possible to where the processing power is needed: in the car, at the base station, in my backpack? It will be necessary to audit how they are doing and how connectivity needs will change in the future. This means that many leaders need to analyze the situation and perhaps change their strategies.
Non-tech companies may feel this is not their business. How does this idea change?
I’ve never walked into a room in any country in the world where everyone didn’t have a cell phone.
When mobile communications were in their infancy you literally had to move or go outside to get a signal. Now we take it for granted. What leaders should do now is ask what else they can connect if their workforce is connected.
I went to Istanbul recently and the company I was working with had a policy that didn’t allow roaming in Turkey, so an employee got lost at the airport and arrived late because he couldn’t use his phone. You are a remote worker in another country who cannot communicate because, despite having the technology, the policy does not allow hyperconnectivity.
Which sectors will benefit most in the coming years?
Everyone who needs connectivity, short or long range.
A few years ago I worked with a specialist in a private 5G network. It was 5G technology but used inside a factory – why wouldn’t it simply use Wi-Fi? Well, Wi-Fi isn’t always reliable. It’s unregulated spectrum and so we’re always competing with everyone for the service. If you have robots inside the factory and rely on regular Wi-Fi, this can be risky.
In the manufacturing industry, where you have these robots in warehouses, it may be necessary to have dedicated hyperconnectivity, which could be 5G, a private 5G network or private 6G services that offer a level of reliability and security.
There are complaints that 5G has not fulfilled its promise. What will 6G bring differently?
I remember that a few years ago in the United States, 4G didn’t mean 4G for everyone. In one network, 4G was 3G+ and in another it was LTE.
The promise of 5G has not yet materialized because it’s not just speed, it’s scale. 5G Standalone has been implemented progressively. It’s not cheap, but instead of having 5G going on the back of the existing 4G infrastructure, we have what’s called New Radio, NR. It’s dedicated infrastructure, which means we can do a lot more things, we can ‘slice’ the network.
The other thing that 5G does well is that it scales. If we have millions of devices – and a device could be a pair of pants that have a tag with a transmitter sewn inside the denim – how will it communicate with the “mothership”? It will probably use 5G. But to enable this, you will need to have a massively scalable network and standalone 5G offers that.
It won’t just bring greater speed to consumers, it will allow more things to be connected. We don’t need to go to 6G now.
Portugal is a country of SMEs, many of which do not have the resources to implement many technologies. How can they take advantage of the hyperconnected era?
What they need is to find someone who provides this always-on connectivity, so they don’t have to worry about it.
I want to see this hyperconnectivity always on but invisible. That’s what SMEs want, for things to work. If they’re in the field making repairs and the device doesn’t connect, that’s hours and possibly lost revenue.
Do you see negative points in hyperconnectivity, such as ‘burnout’?
When cell phones appeared we were told that we would have a lot more free time, because they would help us with that. And I think they actually took time away from us, because we are always connected. There are psychological impacts and yes, there is ‘burnout’. And we already know the impacts of social media on mental health.
But this has to be weighed against the benefits. If we weren’t connected, many of the innovations we’ve seen wouldn’t exist. We enter a market, we want to buy something and we have that square terminal that has to connect to a ‘mothership’ somewhere to complete the transaction. A small business takes it for granted that it will work, without even knowing how or if there is a SIM card there.
One of the things I will talk about in Lisbon is that we will see the rise of eSIM technology, which will be embedded in the device. We’ll never have to insert a physical SIM card again. The new devices will already come with them integrated, they will simply work. My concept of hyperconnectivity is that we won’t have to worry about how it connects. It simply works.
Will any technology be more important than others in the future?
The big opportunity is in AI with IoT. Because when we have connected things, even our jeans and shoes, we will have so much data that the only way to interpret it will be to use AI.
AI is very good at speed and scale. When you combine the mass of relevant data that is coming out of an IoT platform, we will need AI to understand it.
The other thing is cloud computing at the edge. Have processing capacity available as close as possible to where it is needed. The three together and the connectivity technology, whether 5G or 6G, will work in harmony.