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The Equations
Driving
Asia-Pacific ICT
By
Stephen
McClelland
I
t may be heady times in the ICT
(information and communication
technologies) world with more
infrastructure, applications and devices
appearing in the Asia-Pacific region
than ever before.
International Agents
But, below the surface, the outlook
remains a complex and highly nu-
anced one.
Demand is burgeoning for data-
centers and fibre optic connectiv-
ity across the region. But changing
demand patterns and the arrival of
new players – particularly in the OTT
space – have disrupted traditional
business models and foreseeable
market behaviours. Set to enter the
picture are emerging technologies
such as 5G that some predict will
cause enormous changes in the mo-
bile landscape. Alongside this, some
see a plethora of new applications
based on IoT finally gaining traction.
5G: future glue?
Asia-Pacific ICT futures clearly
see many possibilities intertwined.
Metaphorically, several business and
technology equations need to be ad-
dressed at the same time. The IoT
space, for example, may be exciting,
but it is also the most problematic to
forecast. At PTC’17, Dr Minoru Etoh,
senior vice president at Japan’s NTT
DoCoMo, predicted an upsurge in in-
telligent systems, particularly driven
by 5G deployment, a “glue” technology
bringing together many different appli-
cations and services.
He continues to suggest a suc-
cessful IoT equation can be built from
combining ICT and what he terms
operational technology. “Existing op-
erational technologies, such as con-
struction technology, manufacturing
technology and transportation tech-
nology,” he indicates, “to date don’t
require significant communication
capabilities…in the long run, however,
those systems may need massively
diverse sensor communication.” In
turn, he suggests, this will drive ad-
vanced networks as major B2B sys-
tems take shape.
Driving a new vision?
Within this, he suggests 5G will
power major capabilities in a new
generation of autonomous vehicles.
Perhaps with this future in mind,
some players are already mak-
ing their bets. Intel’s USD15 billion
purchase of technology specialist
Mobileye in March 2017 had many
reaching for their calculators: smart
vehicles could individually generate
a predicted 4000Gb of data every day,
with Intel predicting a million cars will
produce as much data as half of the
world’s population currently does. As a
result, datacentre players are also said
to be taking these possibilities seriously.
Driverless vehicles may be a stand-
out IoT application, potentially generat-
ing high data throughput at low latency,
but these services will clearly impose
specific network and service demand,
and standardization is also important.
“We will see the development of regional
interconnectivity requirements as a
consequence of the roll out of IoT and
the inevitable applications that this will
require,” suggests Eric Handa, CEO of
APTelecom. However, in intercontinental
terms, there may be less impact. “I can’t
imagine driverless cars would lead to
demand for intercontinental bandwidth
just for practical reasons,” says Stephan
Beckert, vice president of strategy at
TeleGeography. “It is going to require
connectivity that is very much localized.”
More generally, Bill Barney, CEO of
Global Cloud Exchange (GCX), likewise
suggests the weight in these kind of ap-
plications will fall on data processing:
“The interesting thing is that IoT [will
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May - June, 2017
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