• The DSP Leaders Council members have shared their views on the telecom sector’s major trends
• They were asked to rate the near-term importance to telcos of multiple technology developments 
• More energy-efficient infrastructure and digital support systems (next-generation OSS and BSS) were highlighted as the most important
• The development of metaverse platforms didn’t get much love

Members of the DSP Leaders Council, a forum of leading industry executives drawn from all corners of the digital service provider (DSP) community that was launched last December, have identified “more energy-efficient network infrastructure” and “next-generation digital support systems” (that will replace legacy OSS and BSS applications) as critical technology developments that will impact telecom network operators over the next three years. 

Responding to a wide-ranging survey (conducted during December 2023 and January 2024) covering many of the most critical trends and developments in the telecom industry, the full results of which can be found in the free-to-download DSP Leaders Council Industry Vision Report, the councillors were asked to consider the importance to the DSP/CSP (digital/communications service provider) community of a number of technology developments over the next three years and rate that importance on a scale of 1 (not important) to 10 (of the utmost importance). 

As you can see from the chart above, which shows the aggregated scores for each of the technology developments that the councillors were asked to vote on, energy-efficient network systems are regarded as being the most important which, given the rapidly rising energy bills that network operators have been hampered by over the past few years, and the fact that power-hungry wireless access networks are only going to get more dense in the coming years, is perhaps not a surprise. 

What raised eyebrows here at TelecomTV is the high score afforded to next-generation digital support systems – the cloud-native software systems that are already starting to supersede traditional operational support system (OSS) and business support system (BSS) tools: This was the only technology development that did not attract a single score lower than 5 from any of the councillors. 

This, though, is a very good sign that the council’s members understand just how critical such systems are to the day-to-day operations of DSPs/CSPs. Despite underpinning the management and monetisation of networks and services, the OSS/BSS sector has long been regarded as a dull backwater of the telecom sector, but it is arguably just as, if not more, important as the physical network infrastructure, and is home to many of the industry’s AI-related and identity management developments. 

The third-highest score, interestingly, went to the development of network APIs for telco-as-a-platform strategies. This area is now becoming high stakes for DSPs and the vendor community alike – Verizon’s collaboration with Ericsson’s Vonage and MásMóvil’s deployment of Singtel’s Paragon platform are just two of the most recent examples of how important network API developments will be in 2024 and beyond. Expect to hear a lot more about this topic at MWC24 at the end of February. 

Technology developments related to AI did not get hype-impacted scores from our councillors. It’s also clear from the results that it’s still very early days for quantum-safe networking and the development of metaverse platforms, as our councillors were asked to score these technologies only on their importance over the next three years: It will be interesting to see how these scores change (if at all!) over the rest of the decade. 

To get the full details of how the councillors voted and to see what they think about key industry topics, such as the fair share debate, the impact of AI, procurement processes and asset ownership, download the DSP Leaders Council Industry Vision Report now.

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV