Everybody is becoming a gadget geek, even those who don’t want to, because everything is going digital, and LTE technology is just driving that transition. It sometimes seems like we are there already, at least in markets where LTE has become the standard way to be connected.
But we certainly will continue to make great strides in the near future, when many others uses will be triggered and accelerated by other drivers that are just around the corner.
Google Glasses will drive new ways for digital technology to permeate everyday life. Connected Cars will drive another huge demand in the future that does not exist today. Wearable devices will drive other uses and Apps, visible or working behind the scenes, to drive most of the data in the big network (or whatever we will call it in the future). What´s next, and next, and …?
Technology will continue to spur innovation in services, and the internet highways will maintain their strategic role in making it possible for everything to be connected anytime, anywhere.
In mature markets there is no such thing as not being connected all the times. Even on airplanes, people will start being continually connected. Now imagine a future where every market is mature. Yes, there is still a long way, but we are evolving at a faster pace than ever.
The first step of an interesting and inevitable trend has been accomplished by the recently announced partnership between Comcast and Netflix, an example of a carrier partnering with a content provider that will unleash many other ways to explore the quality of digital content and services without the limitations or constrains from the network that usually limits the user experience.
The offerings, though, will always lag behind demand as more ways to use the power of LTE continue to be unleashed, which will make it always seem that this is a scarce resource that will empower the continuous development of more, newer technology able to deal with this never ending trend.
But as always, every new possibility comes at a price. More power will bring more complexity that will offer the possibility of engaging more and more parties on the digital network.
But this means as well that there will be more opportunities for exploiting this power by those who wish to explore the dark side of the bigger and bigger moon to their advantage.
More power drives more services, which in turn will drive more complexity, and that will eventually offer additional opportunities for malicious business. Everything comes at a price.
The challenges of managing the complexities brought to life by newer technologies will continue to increase as technology evolves. The movement of everything toward digital means that more and more groups and “worlds” will be exposed. And as challenges drive opportunities, new opportunities will emerge to manage complexity differently, to do more, faster and at a cheaper price per unit, driving innovation behind the scenes.
Big data, for example, is not just a buzzword. It is driven by this move to “all digital” everywhere and anytime that LTE is enabling. Big data itself will drive opportunities that will accelerate with a snow ball effect that means new opportunities in every part of the equation.
So, is LTE leading to excellence in our lives? Since we will never fully arrive at excellence, we will never completely understand what excellence truly means. We never know what we don´t know. And that leaves us always waiting for the next big thing, or even just the next small step that will lead us to something better.