By: Scott St. John, Pipeline
As 2019 draws to a close, I can't help but feel a little less than satisfied. But my expectations may have been a little overly optimistic.
2019 started off with a big bang, hurdling next-generation technology out into the industry ethos. 5G, AI, IoT, and host of other trends had such great promise and their adoption had some
real, tangible traction. So where are all the 5G phones, AI-driven networks, robotic workers and self-driving cars? We couldn't even get
the hooverboard right.
Fact is we're not there yet, and that's okay. These things take time. The important thing is that we made real progress.
Over 70 5G networks are estimated to be online by the end of the year spanning over 100 cities on multiple continents. Over
20 billion connected devices were
brought online with estimates reaching nearly 40 billion by 2030. More recently and to the point, when I called my service provider regarding an outage, the issue had been resolved by
the time a live person picked up the phone—twice. These small, iterative steps are as real as they are important.
The full weight and permutations of these next-generation technologies has yet to be seen, but it will. In the years to come it will continue to morph into various use cases as business
continue to evolve, innovate and transform—changing the way we communicate and the very fabric of our global, connected society.
As always we hope you enjoy this and every issue of Pipeline, and we wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year.