TGC12 e book

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E book 12 -2017 dated 26 Sept 2017
From a blog dedicated to provide Strategic Insights for Telcos and
CSP's
Blog Source : www.maliksadiq13.wordpress.com
Table of Contents
About Sadiq Malik ( Telco Strategist )
1 Blockchain for Telcos : Full Steam ahead
2 Robots and Telcos : 3CPO and R2D2 reporting for duty
3 Industrie 4.0 and Telcos : Deutschland der Reisefuhrer
4 AI and Telcos : made for each other
5 Big Data : Corral Hadoop and Apache Shark
6 Hot in 2016 and getting hotter in 2017
7 Smart Cities : strategic insights
8 Blockchain Phenomena : More disruptive than you think

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About
Sadiq Malik is Principal Consultant at Broadband Gurus Network which provides a
portfolio of consultancy services to address the ongoing business challenges faced
by organisations throughout the telecoms value chain.
Broadband Gurus Network , a think tank that is focused on helping Telcos and
Government Regulators on how best to monetize broadband in the pursuit of
bridging the Digital Divide in Developing countries.
At Informa Telecoms Media’s Middle East & Africa region Sadiq spearheaded the
design and delivery of consultancy packages to help telcos and CSPs succeed in a
fast evolving market landscape with alternative business models . At BCT Global,
Sadiq led the formation of the telco services division where he secured contracts
concerning a range of innovative services in the broadband arena.
As strategic projects consultant for Motorola, he initiated projects with a long-term
impact on the company’s intellectual and brand competitiveness such as the
establishment of Africa’s first cellular training centre.Sadiq has managed several key
projects for Telcos / CSP’s including: LTE Business Planning; Fixed Mobile Operator
Consolidation assessment; monetising VAS strategic planning and Smart Cities
Evolution (technical and commercial planning).
Sadiq is speaker at telco conferences and conducts CxO workshops for CSP’s in
Germany , Singapore , Holland , Malaysia , Dubai, Cairo and Johanesburg. Some of
the workshop themes : BSS/OSS transformation , Hybrid Broadband Architectures ,
LTE and 5 G Technical and commercial aspects , Telco 2 business models , Mobile
network optimisation and Capacity planning , Business case build up for IOT ,
SDN/NFV and Telco Blockchain.

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1: Blockchain for Telcos : Full Steam ahead
A complex technology anchored in a powerful, simple idea, blockchain is fast
gaining traction as the next big innovation in secure connectivity. Blockchain is a
peer-to-peer distributed database, which means that instead of your database
existing on a single server system, copies of each new piece of data are sent out to
all users involved in the ‘chain’ or network. Any service which requires a method to
systematically record an event (such as ownership transfer, contract agreement,
contract realisation etc.) could potentially benefit from blockchain.
According to a report by Deloitte Germany, the telecom industry will see a huge
impact of Blockchain in upcoming years. Precisely offering new solutions for fraud
management, Identity-as-a-Service and data management, enablement of 5G and
building secure IoT connectivity. 5G technology implementation is a prime example
to potentially benefit from the blockchain to streamline processes. To realize the 5G
promise of ubiquitous access across various networks, CSPs will need to handle
heterogeneous access nodes and diverse access mechanisms. Selecting the fastest
access node for every user or machine will be a central challenge in the future.
Blockchain can enable a new generation of access technology selection
mechanisms to build sustainable solutions.
A number of telcos are already adopting this technology in order to gain a foot hold
ahead of competition. As of February this year, Sprint, Du, Testra and Orange to
name a few, all have projects in motion with some dating back to 2015. US telecom
Sprint is working on a new blockchain initiative focused on carrier applications.The
firm is partnering with SoftBank, a Japanese telecom conglomerate, and TBCASoft,
Inc., a blockchain startup based in California. For now, it appears the partnership is
still in its early stages, as the three companies said today that joint trials will begin
soon, on leveraging a platform developed by TBCASoft to connect the telecom’s
systems together.
There is quite a bit of excitement about having digital rights on a blockchain-type
system. It could allow for pay-per-usage, for example, while smart contracts — the
contractual clauses that form part of a transaction — could provide automatic

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payment distributions, according to a Moody’s Investors Service report. So Verizon
filed a recent patent for a passcode blockchain. The patent relates to digital
content — think an e-book or a digital-music or video file. The patent filing states
“The DRM (digital rights management) system may maintain a list of passcodes in a
passcode blockchain. …”. A passcode blockchain is a decentralized platform
designed specifically for data-driven companies like Verizon to deal with sensitive
data that are leveraged to carry out core operations.
On a wider scale, this technology could usher in micro-transactions for viewing
content as an alternative to models like permanent purchase or advertising
revenue, allowing creators to be paid directly by consumers, who can in turn, due to
the low prices, get the content they want without ads or hangups in exchange for
paying a relatively low cost. This could also allow things like drop-in drop-out rentals
of real time online games, akin to sticking a quarter into an arcade cabinet, except
that cabinet is connected to a living, breathing online world, for example.
Blockchain is believed to offer an effective and sustainable tool for fraud prevention,
especially in roaming and in subscription identity management. Roaming fraud,
which occurs through individuals actively avoiding payment for use of roaming
services, is made possible due to delays in time between individuals accessing the
mobile network (Visited Public Mobile Network) when roaming and that data being
passed to the subscriber’s telecom provider (Host Mobile Public Network) in order for
them to bill the relevant charge.
This delay allows perpetrators to avoid payment due to billing time delay. Blockchain
in this scenario would set up a micro contract with network users requiring permission
from relevant HPMN and VPMN parties to enable roaming. This would be constantly
sending data from the individual user to their subscribed network provider, allowing
immediate calculation and charges to take place.
One critical aspect of any modern, digital service is finding the right balance
between convenience and security. Security in the blockchain is upheld with public
and private keys. In a digital world without tangible, in person interactions,
establishing trust and ownership may be difficult. This is where the blockchain comes
into play. Blockchain technology allows individuals, independent of each other, to
rely on the same shared, secure and auditable source of information for managing
identity.
According to Gartner, by 2020, there will be more than 20 billion connected things
across the globe, powering a market that will be worth north of $3 trillion. But the
chaotic growth of IoT will introduce several challenges, including identifying,
connecting, securing, and managing so many devices. It will be very challenging for
the current infrastructure and architecture underlying the Internet and online
services to support huge IoT ecosystems of the future.

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Blockchain will enable IoT ecosystems to break from the traditional broker-based
networking paradigm, where devices rely on a central cloud server to identify and
authenticate individual devices. Blockchain technology will enable the creation of
secure mesh networks, where IoT devices will interconnect in a reliable way while
avoiding threats such as device spoofing and impersonation.
Telstra is another Telco leveraging blockchain technology to secure smart home IoT
ecosystems. Cryptographic hashes of device firmware are stored on a private
blockchain to minimize verification time and obtain real-time tamper resistance and
tamper detection.Since most smart home devices are controlled through mobile
apps, Telstra further expands the model and adds user biometric information to the
blockchain hashes in order to tie in user identity and prevent compromised mobile
devices from taking over the network. This way, the blockchain will be able to verify
both the identity of IoT devices and the identity of the people interacting with those
devices.
Telstra is also experimenting with using blockchain for legal interception,
environmental sensor monitoring, car safety, agriculture, network operations, fraud,
compliance and audit, and e-voting. The emergence of crypto currencies on the
technology known as blockchain have highlighted opportunities to repurpose that
technology to capture various digital transactions in immutable, distributed and
secure ways. One more notably futuristic use of blockchain relates to the booming
machine learning-based field of behavioural analytics, a discipline that hinges on
tracking normal organisational behaviour and flagging anomalies. This use of
blockchain will give insight into behaviours which are outside the norm.
Of course Blockchain may not be the Holy Grail in hand right now. One can think
that the replication of databases and validation by consensus are computing
power-intensive. Since a blockchain retains all historical data, the size of an
established blockchain at each node might become unsustainable. Instead, a
mechanism to archive historical data needs to be looked at. But the main challenge
is likely to be the maturity of the ecosystem and supporting infrastructure? Clear
regulatory frameworks need to be defined for the implementation of agreements as
digital, smart contracts. Conforming to existing data standards in terms of both
structure and transport for sharing of information needs to be harmonised.
Despite its apparent complexity and challenges , Blockchain usage in Telcos will
increase dramatically in the next decade.The telco has a trusted position – even
more trusted than government and banks — in most economies. There is an
enormous opportunity to take that trusted position and make trust itself the heart of
the telco value proposition in the coming decades.
” Becoming that digital quarterback for the local blockchain economy, facilitating
settlements and transactions — it’s long been a dream. Remember — when the

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dollar was the currency in the twentieth century, banks made a fortune by selling
trust ” TM Forum
Blockchain shares a key characteristic with 5G….its about the applications and use
cases thereof…not the technology itself that will make it commercially
successful……So the question for any self respecting Telcos exec with an eye on the
future is ….What are you going to do about it ? Take the Bull by the horns or become
an Ostrich and pray the storm passes by ?
2 : Robots and Telcos : 3CPO and R2D2 reporting for duty
Just as industrial robots are remaking the manufacturing industry by creating higher
production rates and improved quality, Robotic Process Automation “bots” are
revolutionizing the way we think about and administer business processes, IT support
processes, workflow processes, remote infrastructure and back-office work. RPA
provides dramatic improvements in accuracy and cycle time and increased
productivity in transaction processing while it elevates the nature of work by
removing people from dull, repetitive tasks. Although the term “Robotic Process
Automation” connotes visions of physical robots wandering around offices
performing human tasks, the term really means automation of service tasks that
were previously performed by humans
RPA is actually a software development toolkit that allows non-engineers to quickly
create software robots (known commonly as “bots”) to automate rules-driven
business processes. In RPA parlance, a “robot” is equivalent to one software license
At the core, an RPA system imitates human interventions that interact with internal IT
systems. It is a non-invasive application that requires minimum integration with the
existing IT setup; delivering productivity by replacing human effort to complete the
task. Any company which has labor-intensive processes, where people are
performing high-volume, highly transactional process functions, will boost their
capabilities and save money and time with robotic process automation.

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Similarly, RPA offers enough advantage to companies which operate with very few
people or shortage of labor. Both situations offer a welcome opportunity to save on
cost as well as streamline the resource allocation by deploying automation . After
processing the work using rules and adding data as necessary by accessing more
systems, the human inputs the completed work to yet other systems like ERP and
CRM.
Early adopters of RPA are finding that automation can radically transform back
offices, delivering much lower costs while improving service quality, increasing
compliance, and decreasing delivery time. But as with all innovations, organizations
must learn to manage RPA adoption to achieve maximum results.In 2010, Telefónica
O2 managed over 60 core processes (amounting to about 400 subprocesses). To
reduce costs further, Telefónica O2 began eliminating non-value added processes
and optimizing and simplifying the processes that remained.
As an example of an eliminated process, Telefónica O2 removed a legacy process
that verified order shipments. The order process had become so mature that it was
99.99 percent accurate—the legacy verification process was no longer worthwhile.
Besides process elimination, Telefónica O2 also sought to optimize processes by
simplifying them, and by bringing the BPO provider onshore to gain a better
understanding of Telefónica O2. The entire process rationalization initiative—which
included process elimination, simplification, and optimization— reduced labor
headcount by ten percent.
Telefónica O2 began its rollout with 20 robots. The next wave increased the number
of robots to 75. Eventually, a third staff member was trained. With just a team of
three RPA developers in-house, Telefónica O2 automated 15 core processes
including SIM swaps, credit checks, order processing, customer reassignment,
unlatching, porting, ID generation, customer dispute resolution and customer data
updates, representing about 35 percent of all back office transactions by first
quarter of 2015.
As of April 2015, Telefónica O2 deployed over 160 “robots” that process between
400,000 and 500,000 transactions each month, yielding a three-year return on
investment of between 650 and 800 percent . In just three years, Telefónica O2
reported £950,000 in net benefits. For some processes, it reduced the turnaround
time from days to just minutes. Subsequently, customer “chase up” calls have been
reduced by over 80 percent per year because fewer customers needed to inquire
about the status of service requests. Scalability was unbeatable—its robotic
workforce could be doubled almost instantly when new products were about to be
launched—and then scaled back down after the surge.
Some robots are designed to replace a human being, but they can usually work
faster. This speeds up the process, perhaps causing a bottleneck elsewhere. Robots
can also carry out tasks that are impossible for humans, or at least impossible for

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humans to complete within a reasonable amount of time. This might create
opportunities to introduce greater complexity or more decision points into your
processes than a human would be able to manage. But there are certain
exceptions to this rule.
When humans execute processes, they make many little judgments based on
common sense. So, for example, a human can gauge that “St. Louis” and “Saint
Louis” are equivalents, but a robot will only recognize them as equivalents if
instructed to do so. Robots will only execute exactly what they are configured to
execute. In short, robots lack common sense. Thus, the explication of rules for robots
must be much more detailed than for humans. Telefónica O2 provides an anecdote
that illustrated this lesson well. When the Apple iPhone was announced, Telefónica
O2’s customers could preorder the phone. In their exuberance, some customers
preordered the iPhone multiple times. Whereas a human would likely recognize that
a single customer is really requesting a single phone, the robot did not. The robot
shipped customers multiple phones !!
Although Telefónica O2 is clearly an RPA proponent, it views RPA as a
complementary tool along with process elimination, process improvement and even
with other automation tools. It also stressed the importance of sequencing these
tools so that process elimination and process improvement preceded RPA.
Telefónica O2 has continued to use both BPMS and RPA solutions. Within the wider
business, Telefonica still have ways and means of eliminating or automating
processes using different technologies such as BPMS or removing a query type out of
Back Office and adding it to their customer-facing online self-service capability. So
RPA is not the only solution to everything, but it’s obviously a great tool to have in
one’s repertoire.
The global market for RPA Software and Services reached $271 million in 2016 and is
expected to grow to $1.2 billion by 2021 at a compound annual growth rate of 36%.
The direct services market includes implementation and consulting services focused
on building RPA capabilities within an organization. It does not include wider
operational services like BPO, which may include RPA becoming increasingly
embedded in its delivery . Digital effectiveness is all about organizations enjoying
real-time process flows forged through the elimination of manual process break-
points and intelligent linking of data patterns across the front and back offices. RPA
is a critical building block in facilitating this journey.
You can’t create value – or transform a business operation – without converged,
real-time data. Digitally-driven organizations must create a ” Digital spine ” to
support the front office by automating manual processes, digitizing manual
documents to create converged datasets, and embracing the cloud in a way that
enables genuine scalability and security for a digital organization.Organizations
simply cannot be effective with a digital strategy without automating processes
intelligently – forget all the hype around robotics and jobs going away, this is about

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making processes run digitally so smart organizations can grow their digital
businesses and create new work and opportunities.
This is where RPA adds most value today… however, as more processes become
digitized, the more value we can glean from cognitive applications that feed off
data patterns to help orchestrate more intelligent, broader process chains that link
the front to the back office. In the pundits’s view, as these RPA solutions mature,
we’ll see a real convergence of analytics, RPA and cognitive solutions as intelligent
data orchestration becomes the true lifeblood – and currency – for organizations.
Maybe in the future an artificial smile may even appear on robotic faces from the
pride of a job well done, a business outcome met – and maybe they will share their
pride with one of you while sipping freshly brewed, fragrant and delicious coffee
data from a fancy digital coffee mug. So bottom line : If you claim to be a DIGITAL
TELCO then RPA will have to be part of your Digital DNA !!
3 : Industrie 4.0 and Telcos : Deutschland der Reisefuhrer
Industry 4.0 is the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing
technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things and cloud
computing. The 4.0 designation signifies that this is the world’s fourth industrial
revolution, the successor to three earlier industrial revolutions that caused quantum
leaps in productivity and changed the lives of people throughout the world.
Industry 4.0 is a project of the future of the German government’s high-tech strategy,
which aims to advance the penetration of information technology in conventional
industrial manufacturing .The strategic goal is to achieve the smart factory, which is
characterized by its adaptability, resource efficiency and ergonomics, as well as the
integration of customers, employees and business partners in business and value
creation processes. The Internet of Things is one of the technological foundations for
the smart factory.

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Within the modular structured smart factories, cyber-physical systems monitor
physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make
decentralized decisions. Over the Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems
communicate and cooperate with each other and with humans in real time, and
via the Internet of Services, both internal and cross-organizational services are
offered and used by participants of the value chain. Smart Production, is a
cornerstone of the Industry 4.0-Smart Factory concept, and includes the
incorporation of advanced logistics management, man-machine interaction, and
three-dimensional (3D) visualization technologies into production processes.
A harbinger of the next industrial revolution is already bubbling in the small Bavarian
city of Amberg. The Siemens Electronics Plant manufactures simatic programmable
logic controls (PLCs), used for automating equipment in a variety of industries from
automobile manufacturers to food and beverage producers. Basic automation has
been a part of the Amberg plant since it began in 1989, now machines and
computers handle 75 percent of the production process from start to finish. In
addition to PLCs, the plant also makes use of human machine interface (HMI)
components such as heavy-duty touchscreens, and coordinates the process
through WinCC software and the company’s engineering framework, known as TIA
(totally integrated automation) Portal.
Given the variety of production environments and techniques, raw materials, and
specialized equipment requirements for each industry, however, a one-size-fits-all
solution will not be the answer. Consideration must also be given to the specific
operating requirements of each production environment.
For example, in steel mills, temperature sensors must accurately measure the
condition of steel plates and tooling in hot rolling processes in environment
operating with temperatures reaching 2,100-degrees Fahrenheit. Wired
communication systems do not work at such a high temperature, making wireless
communication technology the only viable solution.
Oil refineries are an example where wireless signals are weakened because of the
maze of metal pipes. In such environments, wireless technologies featuring strong
diffraction and penetration capabilities, enterprise Long-Term Evolution (eLTE)
technologies, fit the bill perfectly.
Schildknecht AG, a southern German specialist in industrial electronics, uses Twitter
to let machines communicate with people, making both sides smarter. Whether
single devices or complete production lines – the people responsible for operating
the machines are active followers of a closed or open user group, which can follow
and manage the tweets on a smartphone, tabs, or desktop computer. If a machine
reports a product error or a malfunction warning, the communication can be bi-
directional: The user can send a tweet back to the machine, for example, to reset

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the error. Implementing such solutions on a large scale requires reliable, secure
networking from end to end.
However some observers feel that Industry 4.0 as a concept is poorly defined and
suffers from exaggerated expectations; others believe that fully digitised products
and value chains are still a ‘pipe dream’. The Gartner Group’s hype cycle for
emerging technologies for 2014 places many of the technologies associated with
Industry 4.0 (including machine-to-machine communications, big data, the Internet
of Things and smart robots) near the ‘peak of inflated expectations’, still five to ten
years from the point where the payoff for applying these in the broad market is
evident. In a global 2013-14 survey, 88% of the respondents said they did not fully
understand the underlying business models of the Industrial Internet of Things and its
long-term implications for their industry. Even those convinced of the value of
Industry 4.0 can foresee a series of barriers ahead.
Large investments are needed if enterprises are to make the move to Industry 4.0;
these are projected to be €40 billion annually until 2020 for Germany alone (perhaps
as much as €140 billion annually in Europe). These investments can be particularly
daunting for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who fear the transition to
digital because they cannot access how it will affect their value chains. So far take
up has been cautious: even in Germany (a leader in manufacturing), only an
estimated one in five companies uses interconnected IT systems to control its
production processes, though almost half intend to do so.
Other critics say that systems are too expensive, too unreliable and oversized, and
that the Industry 4.0 approach is being driven largely by equipment producers rather
than customer demand. There is a strong divergence of views between those keen
to promote the idea of a wireless (as opposed to simply “connected”), or even
mobile (as opposed to nomadic wireless), factory future, and others who simply
don’t see their customers ripping out and replacing their factory solutions.
With the large quantities of data being collected and shared with partners in the
value network, businesses need to be clear about who owns what industrial data
and to be confident that the data they produce will not be used by competitors or
collaborators in ways that they do not approve. In particular, smart services will be
based on the data generated by smart devices during their manufacture and use.
For example, car-makers are reluctant to share data generated by their cars, for
fear of finding their profits being squeezed by digital competitors.
The market is evolving fast, with a blurring of the boundaries between the domains
of the manufacturing automation specialists, such as ABB, Bosch and Siemens, and
of the IT providers offering applications and systems integration services. Where once
there were separate ecosystems of hardware and software suppliers, the
development of cloud and IoT solutions is bringing them together into the same
competitive arena. At the same time, communications providers (hardware

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providers or service providers) are being sucked into the value chain to enable
interconnection of devices and sensors so that data can be aggregated and
analyzed.
There are several ways operators might attempt to break into this new market such
as targeting new factory builds (where using mobile might reduce the upfront
networking cost) and targeting factory refurbishments (where the cables need to
ripped out anyway). They might also try a completely different approach. Spectrum
sub-licensing (where national regulations allow) may make sense here, giving
operator revenues (where otherwise they might have none), vendors the
opportunity to sell their kit and factories the capability to use licensed spectrum
within the geographical confines of their properties but retain control of their
infrastructure and (assuming the licensing model makes sense) retain control over
costs. 5 G “ slicing “ will allow Telcos to dedicate network resources to Industriel
manufacturers. So there is a power play and any self respecting Tier 1 Telco must get
ready for it.
According to Experton Analysyis , those who will become established players in the
market are not necessarily the providers with the best IoT platform technology, but
those who can establish a partner ecosystem around their own IoT platform. Major
risks for industrial control systems are not related to information losses, but rather
include system failures, communications losses and a loss of control. Often, such
disruptive scenarios are a result of malware and DDoS attacks. Industrial security
solutions shall help prevent such attacks. IoT logistics has a focus on product tracking
and transport path optimization as well as fleet management for forwarding agents.
Smart fleet management solutions must go beyond GPS tracking of vehicles and
analyze consumption data, maintenance needs caused by wear and tear and fuel
optimization.
For Telcos to really participate in this phenomenon of Industry 4.0 ( like Deustch
Telekom in Germany ) they need to imbed and leverage the basic building blocks :
Cloud Computing , Data Analytics and IoT. They need to develop and manage
complex ecosystems through platform thinking. They must be prepared to
orchestrate the 4.0 services delivery model in a manner that will benefit the whole
ecosystem rather than trying to gobble up everything themselves. A real network
effect can only be generated by ecosystems that combine a strong core solution
(USP) with a strong business model (win-win) to attract more and more partners.
Within the next few years, we will experience intense “coopetition” between
competing IoT ecosystems.
Most of all one must remember that although technology — Big Data, cloud
computing, and IoT — play an important role in Industry 4.0, the fundamental driver
is a strategy for improving the efficiency and competitiveness of enterprises by
resolving the fundamental challenges that plague multiple industries. In the words of
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Industry 4.0 is ‘the comprehensive

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transformation of the whole sphere of industrial production through the merging of
digital technology and the internet with conventional industry’.
According to Deutsche Telekom CEO ” Companies in the classic production industry
are increasingly digitalizing and networking their business processes in real time so
that they will be able to produce better, at less cost, and more flexibly in the future.
The products and services from the corporation’s core business such as secure cloud
computing, broadband and mobile networks, complex IT security solutions, and the
ICT knowhow of all of the colleagues in Telekom Group are the foundation.”
4 : AI and Telcos : made for each other
Some of the main themes highlighted at the MWC were the essential enabling
technologies that are going to determine the nature of the future digital world:
artificial intelligence, robotics, SDN / NFV , security, privacy, identity etc. The most
intriguing for most of us is… i daresay .. AI…Artificial Intelligence !!
In Wiki terms Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of a machine that could
successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can. For many,
a useful definition of AI is the theory and development of computer systems able to
perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.
Developing machines capable of exhibiting human like intelligence has been in the
research field from the mid-1950s. Underlying these machine capabilities is an ever-
expanding set of technologies and software tools including neural networks, genetic
algorithms, sensing devices and sensing interpretation algorithms.
Cognitive computing is a relatively new term, often used as a synonym for artificial
intelligence. Unlike traditional computer systems, which are programmed by people
to perform certain tasks, cognitive systems have the ability to learn through their

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interactions with both data and humans. They can even adapt and get smarter
over time… matter is no longer science fiction.
Cognitive computing is a component of the broader trend around big data, but it is
particularly important because cognitive computing focuses on the realm of
unstructured data, which is clearly dominant in volume over that of structured
data.You may want to read up on the IBM Watson Project here to get really want to
dig deep into Industry initiative on AI / CC .
If you did not know but some of the basic AI technologies have already been
incorporated by 3GPP into 4 G + network architecture .Self-organizing networks
(SON) are the attempt to simplify and speed up the planning, configuration,
management, optimization and healing of mobile communications networks.
One of the first standardized SON features, related to the “self-configuration”
category, is automatic neighbor relation (ANR). ANR significantly reduces the time
required to set up a base station by automatically managing neighbor cell relations,
thus replacing time-consuming manual setup. ANR relies on the mobile terminal’s
capability to report cells that it has detected but that are not part of the neighbor
list broadcasted by the LTE network.
Furthermore, the anticipated massive deployment of small(er) cells, such as
femtocells or picocells, as part of moving towards a heterogeneous network
(HetNet) deployment strategy will push the ANR functionality, because the manual
management of neighbor relations between cells will become even more
challenging if not impossible.
According to pundits AI will have a profound impact on the Telco operators in
various domains. For starters the mutually beneficial relationship between IoT and AI
is manifesting itself in many successful integrations of the two technologies in the B2B
and B2B2C space. The value propositions that underpin the fusion of IoT and AI
include smart sensors (or intelligent sensors), which combine IoT and AI to provide
realtime data and feedback.
AI will grab much of the attention in IoT-related projects because the IoT evolution
requires a new and fundamentally different approach for locating devices / sensors
and then beyond that, securing and sharing their location information. Without
those, IoT won’t live up to its potential – and hype. AI impacts IoT solutions in two key
dimensions—firstly in enabling real-time responses, for example via a remote video
camera reading license plates or analysing faces; and secondly in post event
processing, such as seeking out patterns in data over time and running predictive
analytics.

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A handful of companies already have a very detailed picture of their markets thanks
to far-sighted decisions to add connectivity to the products they sell. Komatsu, for
example, uses its Komtrax system to track the activities of almost 430,000 bulldozers,
dump-trucks and forklifts belonging to its customers. The Japan-based company has
integrated monitoring technologies and connectivity into its construction and mining
equipment since the late 1990s. Komatsu says the Komtrax system is standard
equipment on “most Komatsu Tier-3 Construction machines” and on most small utility
machines and backhoes.
Komatsu’s machines ship with GPS chips that can pinpoint their position, together
with a unit that gathers engine data. They can then transmit the resulting data to a
communication satellite, which relays that information to the Komtrax data
centre.The data captured by Komtrax (and other Internet of Things solutions) delivers
Market Intelligence , Offer VAS and Data to support AI. Komtrax provides valuable
information about how its customers use its equipment, which can then be used to
refine its R&D activities.
Furthermore, Komatsu is linking market information directly with its production plants
through Komtrax . It says its factories “aggressively monitor and analyse the
conditions of machine operation and abrasion of components” to enable Komatsu
and its distributors to improve operations by better predicting the lifetime of parts
and the best time for overhauls. The ongoing advances in computing science mean
that knowledge (in the form of insights gleaned from large volumes of detailed
data) can increasingly be used to perform predictive analytics, enabling new
services and cutting costs
The full AI/telecom future may arrive more quickly than many people realize.
SoftBank is a major player in telecommunications in Japan and the United States. Its
founder and CEO, Masayoshi Son, is a believer in the key role that AI will play going
forward. AT&T is settling on an AI platform that can be used for different things
instead of developing “one-off” solutions every time a task requiring the predictive
capabilities and massive number-crunching abilities of AI presents itself.
AI can be used to process the trillions of possibilities – really fast – it has been
calculated that brute force computing power alone would take years. AI solution
providers use Genetic Algorithms, Simulated Annealing, Bayesian and Neural
Networks to do optimisation, prediction and modelling. Artificial Intelligence is used
to determine the optimal solution (that is, the “best” configuration of network, taking
all factors into consideration) for a given service request or traffic demand. AI is used
to predict the need for network capacity upgrades, and to determine the optimum
route design and configuration of networks. This means operators can optimize multi-
million-dollar network investment and expansion plans against growing market
demand, increasing agility and eliminating guesswork and the risk of overbuild.

17
Unlike most sectors, Telcos purposefully and tightly connect their business lines with
their IT functions. It is this integration that has enabled telcos to develop the services
and products they offer consumers and customers.This dependence on IT will only
grow as competition within the industry increases. Automating IT workflows using
artificial intelligence can help telecom companies win customers by offering
differentiated value propositions. Instead of dedicating the bulk of their time on
completing rote, manually intensive processes, AI automation technology can
liberate IT talent to focus on evolving and optimizing the company’s IT services to
create an elevated customer experience.
AI is very much with us as a growing number of Telcos will likely find compelling uses
for these technologies; leading organizations may find innovative applications that
dramatically improve their performance or create new capabilities, enhancing their
competitive position.Telcos must get deeper into AI …sooner rather than later….or
the OTT players just might grab that piece of the action as well. Because the
potential of AI has not gone unnoticed by OTT Giants. Google Deepmind is one such
initiative and maybe you need to get scared and do something
5 : Big Data : Corral Hadoop and Apache Shark
There is so much data out there today that no one can possibly process it all. For
example, many companies have the data that can tell them how their customers
actually feel, and when and why those customers might switch to a competitor. The
problem is that most companies do not know what they don’t know. Data transfer is
one of the most pressing problems for companies in the telecom industry today. As
data requirements grow from month to month, cost for dealing the mass also goes
extremely high.
Fortunately Apache Spark will save the day for those who are savvy enough to use it
cleverly. Apache Spark is a powerful open source processing engine built around
speed, ease of use, and sophisticated analytics. It was started at UC Berkeley in 2009

18
and is now developed at the vendor-independent Apache Software Foundation.
Since its release, Spark has seen rapid adoption by enterprises across a wide range
of industries. Internet powerhouses such as Yahoo, eBay and Netflix have deployed
Spark at massive scale, processing multiple petabytes of data on clusters of over
8,000 nodes. Apache Spark has also become the largest open source community in
big data, with over 1000 contributors from 250+ organizations.
Data transfer is one of the most pressing problems for companies in the telecom
industry today. As data requirements grow from month to month, cost for dealing
the mass also goes extremely high.SK Telecom dealt with this data deluge problem
as well as providing network a quality analytics platform for data scientists and
network operators with Spark; how to process real-time network data more
efficiently; and how Spark Streaming and Spark SQL, MLib are used for high-speed
large enterprise data processing and analytics.
SK telecom network quality analysis has proceeded to provide reliable wireless
network and network optimization. For network traffic suddenly increases rapidly and
accurately various attempts to resolve the problem have been conducted. Using
Spark Streaming, Mllib, Spark-SQL let move the real-time processing from base
station quality data based on statistics and set active analysis basis up
Apache Spark in-memory infrastructure has the potential to provide 100 times better
performance as compared to Hadoop’s disk-based MapReduce paradigm. The in-
memory allows user programs to store data in the cluster’s memory and query it
repeatedly. This is done using a Cluster Manager and a Distributed Storage System
applications / algorithms (e.g., topic modelling, deep neural network, etc.), as well
as massively scalable learning system/platform leveraging both application and
infrastructure specific optimizations (exploring data sparsity, parameter server, etc).
Spark brings the top-end data analytics, the same performance level and
sophistication that you get with these expensive systems, to commodity Hadoop
cluster. It runs in the same cluster to let you do more with your data.
If you think about Spark as merely a replacement for Hadoop, you are short-
changing yourself. Instead of replacing Hadoop, consider Spark a complementary
technology that should be used in partnership with Hadoop. Keep in mind that Spark
can run separately from the Hadoop framework, where it can integrate with other
storage platforms and cluster managers. It can also run directly on top of Hadoop,
where it can easily leverage its storage and cluster manager. Simply put, Spark can
run on Hadoop, Mesos, standalone, or in the cloud.
Some insight on Hadoop : https://maliksadiq13.wordpress.com/2013/11/30/big-data-
why-telcos-need-a-closer-look-at-hadoop/

19
Yahoo has two Spark projects in the works, one for personalizing news pages for
Web visitors and another for running analytics for advertising. For news
personalization, the company uses ML algorithms running on Spark to figure out what
individual users are interested in, and also to categorize news stories as they arise to
figure out what types of users would be interested in reading them. Spark brings the
top-end data analytics, the same performance level and sophistication that you get
with these expensive systems, to commodity Hadoop cluster. It runs in the same
cluster to let you do more with your data
Another early Spark adopter is Conviva, one of the largest streaming video
companies on the Internet, with about 4 billion video feeds per month (second only
to YouTube). As you can imagine, such an operation requires pretty sophisticated
behind-the-scenes technology to ensure a high quality of service. As it turns out, it’s
using Spark to help deliver that QoS by avoiding dreaded screen buffering. Conviva
uses Spark Streaming to learn network conditions in real time.They feed [this
information] directly into the video player, say the Flash player on your laptop, to
optimize the speeds. This system has been running in production over six months to
manage live video traffic.
Automating machine learning is an area where Apache Spark really shines. Spark is
designed for data science and its abstraction makes data science easier. Data
scientists commonly use machine learning – a set of techniques and algorithms that
can learn from data. These algorithms are often iterative, and Spark’s ability to
cache the dataset in memory greatly speeds up such iterative data processing,
making Spark an ideal processing engine for implementing such algorithms.
For example, with Spark you can automatically determine the best way to train your
learning algorithm, a technique commonly referred to as hyperparameter tuning.
Machine learning is changing not only how we interact with machines, but how we
relate to the world around us. During the past decade, machine learning has given
us self-driving cars, speech recognition, effective web search and a vastly improved
understanding of the human genome.
Expanded data analytics to enable better and faster decisions, is expected to
accelerate process/product utilization, consumer/market understanding, and
minimize risk in better time. New business requirements and usage models are
emerging and driving the need for new big data analysis paradigms. In particular,
there is increasing demand from organizations to discover and explore data using
advanced analytics algorithms (e.g., large-scale machine learning, graph analysis,
statistic modeling) for deep insights. For this and more we have Apache Spark !!
6 : Hot in 2016 and getting hotter in 2017

20
This year was more about how we will leverage new technologies and reconfigure
our business models : It was about stuff that will turn the Telco world upside
down….5G , Digitization , Software Defined Networks , IoT , Smart Cars etc … not
many Telco CEO’s moaned about OTT players eating their lunch…thank heavens
…perhaps they have finally accepted the fact that you can still make money by
leveraging new technologies and penetrating adjacent markets with some creative
thinking. So lets summarise the hot trends in 2016 world that will drive the Telco
business agendas going forward.
1 : 5G is hurtling at us like the Starship Enterprise at warp 7. Tier 1 Telcos such as
Verizon , NTT DoCoMo, BT , Etisalat etc are busy trialling with the main vendors in Test
Beds and research universities are achieving speeds of I Tbs. Thats your HD movie
download in 4 seconds. Governments from EU,Korea , Japan are throwing millions
into research even as respective Regulators get ready to dole out Spectrum to utilize
higher frequency spectrums ranging from 6 to 66 gigahertz. This would take it into the
millimeter-wave band, which will enable multi-beam multiplexing and massive multi-
input-output (MIMO) technologies.In future, 5G will have a much wider influence in
areas such as realtime monitoring of IoT sensors, due to its low latency attributes. with
the arrival of the 5G era marked by Gbps-level speeds and ultra-low latency, we will
witness a dramatic improvement in the content and service quality along with
increased number of content and service channel….. If you are a Star Trek fan, then
5G-powered Internet of Things (IoT) and Virtual Reality (VR) should fulfill some of your
dreams..Beam me up Scotty !
https://maliksadiq13.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/5g-the-black-swan-has-landed/
2 : DIGITAL Telcos are the rage although the definitions vary but the desired end
result is the same. The most successful CSPs are implementing customer centric
systems that have the insight and visibility required to ensure every customer promise
is fulfilled efficiently.The right blend of technologies will help the Telcos earn the
Digital soubriquet. Think Analytics , flexible BSS/OSS , XaaS models and Virtualisation.

21
Telecoms should learn from other industries, those that have undergone disruption
and continue to innovate. For example, retailers centralize design, architecture, and
operations so that local stores can benefit from the latest fashion items. They can
plan and order with fast turnaround times. Engaging with customers in multiple
digital dimensions opens a whole new world of contexts in which the service
provider can interact with their subscribers, be it offering devices on Social Media or
placing roaming package promotions on etickets.
https://maliksadiq13.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/the-digital-telco-telefonica-is-the-
mighty-sensei/
3 : IoT is about all about M2M chatter enabled by millions of radio chips embedded
everywhere. In future Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning will grab much
of the attention in IoT-related projects. The IoT evolution requires a new and
fundamentally different approach for locating IoT devices and then beyond that,
securing and sharing their location information. Without those, IoT won’t live up to its
potential – and hype. With IoT, wearables and other connected devices, the industry
is now moving in a new direction – from convergence bringing everything to smart
phones, to divergence connecting everything to the Internet. With this market shift,
the industry is screaming for a horizontal, next-generation operating systems that can
meet the needs of innovators to deliver a cross-platform connected experience in
the IoT-era.
https://maliksadiq13.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/internet-of-things-iot-why-it-matters-
to-telcos/
4 : SDN can reduce provisioning time from weeks to seconds, but internal IT and
networking teams should not expect their deployments to go as quickly as that.
Mobile operators that are serious about investing in restructuring their network
infrastructure will need to plan carefully. The number of vendors in the SDN market
continues to increase, and operators must take the time to choose those that best
accommodate their needs. With the advent of SDN, the network can be
dynamically programmed in a highly granular fashion, through the app itself.
SDN/NFV technologies realize network services on shared standard hardware,
allowing faster and easier modification of network configurations such as capacity
and geographical location. By using SDN/NFV technologies, networks can be
deployed for each individual service and optimized based on particular latency,
bandwidth, safety and security needs.
https://maliksadiq13.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/nfv-and-sdn-reloaded-get-started-
telcos/
5 : SMARTPHONES accounted for 45% of global mobile connections Q4 2015 ( GSMA
), surpassing basic and feature phone connections for the first time. Affordability is a

22
major factor influencing smartphone adoption, especially in the developing world.
Smartphone prices are expected to decrease in future due to increasing
competition, a drop in the cost of materials and improvements in software.Wearable
devices featured heavily at MWC but also showed further signs of evolution. The first
phase of enterprise mobility was about empowering users with mobile devices and
email on the move and the second was about basic transactional apps, the third
phase that we are entering now is about the transformation of business processes
using mobile technologies, including wearables and other devices that have started
to enter business thanks to the reduced cost of computing capability, familiarity by
employees of wearable capabilities and increased acceptance by CIOs of BYOD.
https://maliksadiq13.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/wearables-worthless-fad-or-game-
changer/
6 : CONNECTED CARS are rolling with the arrival of LTE and the accelerator will hit the
floor when 5G kicks in. Auto manufacturers are aggressively pursuing opportunities in
the mobile space in their quest to fundamentally rethink transportation. These
companies will triple engineering investment in driver assist technology, speeding the
roll-out of semi automated systems that make it easier to park and drive in heavy
traffic. An autonomous car will most likely become a third place where people will
spend a good amount of time next to their living space and their office. Personal
space and available time are scarce already and will become even more so. An
autonomous car will use less fuel on a given route than a human driver on the same
route, as it can allot just the right amount of energy that is needed. A live telemetry
system that collects data from F1 sports car now works on a larger scale because of
a Wi-Fi-based solution.
https://maliksadiq13.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/mwc-barcelona-day-3-the-
connected-car-is-getting-ready-to-roll/
7 : THE SEARCH for new revenue streams and business models is intensifying because
many markets are now approaching saturation; most economically developed
markets have already surpassed 90% unique subscriber penetration, meaning the
vast majority of the addressable population in these market are already mobile
subscribers. As smartphones approach an unprecedented level of ubiquity, the
maturation of the mobile industry presents opportunities for operators, as well as
undeniable challenges. The ecosystem enabled by almost universal mobile
ownership is of huge value, but equally the traditional subscriber-acquisition model
of operator growth must inevitably be re-evaluated. Collaboration and Co Opetition
are in vogue since most players have realised they cannot own every facet of an
ecosystem..its getting too big and complex.
https://maliksadiq13.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/telco-challenge-1-the-quest-for-
new-business-models/

23
2017 will be all about building , transforming , preparing for : the dawn of Cloud , IoT
, Big Data , AI , VR Apps and services backboned on light speed fibre ultra dense
radio and infrastructure that will enable consumers equipped with bendable screen
smartphones enjoy a different kind of living on the move.
7 : Smart Cities : Strategic Insights
According to Wiki a SMART CITY is an urban development vision to integrate multiple
information and communication technology (ICT) and Internet of Things (IoT)
solutions in a secure fashion to manage a city’s assets – the city’s assets include, but
are not limited to, local departments’ information systems, schools, libraries,
transportation systems, hospitals, power plants, water supply networks, waste
management, law enforcement, and other community services.
The goal of building a smart city is to improve quality of life by using urban
informatics and technology to improve the efficiency of services and meet
residents’ needs. ICT allows city officials to interact directly with the community and
the city infrastructure and to monitor what is happening in the city, how the city is
evolving, and how to enable a better quality of life. Through the use of sensors
integrated with real-time monitoring systems, data are collected from citizens and
devices – then processed and analyzed. The information and knowledge gathered
are keys to tackling inefficiency.
Turning a regular city into a smart city is not simple. There are a lot of challenges and
issues to be tackled: Identifying the funding sources; defining the strategic plan;
knowing the right benefits to the citizen and so on. But with well-defined standards
and best practices, a complex path can be simplified into one that is easy to follow.
Smart cities can be constructed over a set of digital services connected using smart
solutions. But the common scenario in the public sector is that city planners know
their problem but have no idea about how the smart solution could solve it.

24
A smart city will never be delivered well by a single company…rather a strategic
plan based on the ‘start small, think big’ philosophy that will guide the city along the
transformation path . The establishment of a smart ecosystem is necessary to provide
all the solutions needed and to deliver services to end customers. With this in mind,
the roles of each company should be well defined, as well as the expected results.
This will create the real value fabric needed for a win-win relationship and to ensure
the quality of the service at the end.
Barcelona , the capital of Mobile World Congress , has established a number of
projects that can be considered ‘smart city’ applications within its “CityOS”
strategy.For example, sensor technology has been implemented in the irrigation
system in Parc del Centre de Poblenou, where real time data is transmitted to
gardening crews about the level of water required for the plants. Barcelona has also
designed a new bus network based on data analysis of the most common traffic
flows in Barcelona, utilising primarily vertical, horizontal and diagonal routes with a
number of interchanges.
Integration of multiple smart city technologies can be seen through the
implementation of smart traffic lights as buses run on routes designed to optimise the
number of green lights. In addition, where an emergency is reported in Barcelona,
the approximate route of the emergency vehicle is entered into the traffic light
system, setting all the lights to green as the vehicle approaches through a mix of GPS
and traffic management software, allowing emergency services to reach the
incident without delay. Much of this data is being developed into practical solutions
in the 22@Barcelona District, and has been enhanced by an opensource data
pooling middleware.
The biggest challenge for most smart cities is the efficiency of managing and
distributing resources to citizens and businesses. This has been attributed to the lack
of a consolidated means of communication and data sharing – an issue that was
acknowledged by Smart Dubai and pioneered its mandate for Open
Communication among strategic partners from the private and public sector.
Effective smart city leadership is not simply a matter of strong, top-down
governance. It is much more about ensuring that the smart city is built around the
citizen and their needs and aspirations. One of the core requirements of a smart city
is the ability to engage citizens in tackling challenges – that includes residents,
businesses and other community stakeholders. Achieving this can require cultural
and organizational transformation, and there are technical challenges too.
Stockholm’s smart city technology is underpinned by the Stokab dark fibre system
which was developed in 1994 to provide a universal fibre optic network across
Stockholm Private companies are able to lease fibre as service providers on equal
terms. The company is owned by the City of Stockholm itself.Within this framework,
Stockholm has created a Green IT strategy.The Green IT program seeks to reduce
the environmental impact of Stockholm through IT functions such as energy efficient

25
buildings (minimising heating costs), traffic monitoring (minimising the time spent on
the road) and development of e-services (minimising paper usage). The e-
Stockholm platform is centred on the provision of e-services, including political
announcements, parking space booking and snow clearance. This is further being
developed through GPS analytics, allowing residents to plan their route through the
city.
Many pundits believe that there is a very clear historical analogy between
electrification and the technologies related to IoT/Smart Cities. They suspect that we
are still in the early stages of the ‘Smart City/IoT’ and that it’s very hard to place
winning bets on IoT technologies and applications at this time. However, we can
foresee certain infrastructural solutions that will be needed in order for all of this to
work, and whose shape and characteristics we can determine now. Like
electrification there will be an entire secondary industry that will spring up to meet
the infrastructure and logistical needs of the new technology. While we can’t
predict the successful ‘Smart City’/IoT ideas in advance we can see a clear need to
provide an entire suite of services to manage the very large amounts of time
sensitive data that it will involve.
The infrastructure of the Smart City may not be standardized for at least 10 years.
While cities and large corporations are starting to deploy networks with client
download speeds of up to 1000mb/s, little thought has been given to how we give
access within a smart city to the multitude of devices that will need to have reliable
bi-directional connectivity in such an environment.Who will pay for bandwidth used
by sensors that may perform important functions but aren’t owned by anyone in
particular and don’t have user interfaces that lend themselves to configuration?
How will the bandwidth be regulated, and by whom? While various cities have
created their own individual public WAN, the lack of standardized mechanisms for
access and usage management is clearly comparable to the disconnected and
piecemeal spread of electric power generation.
As the devices get closer and closer to people the data will become inherently
sensitive. A simple example: If you install a smart power meter or smart light bulbs,
anyone with access to the data feed will know when you are not at home, even if it
was never a design goal of the system. Vendors will need to store some level of
personal data to build a subscription base, and a failure to secure this data can
represent an existential threat to their business. Frost & Sullivan have predicted
security to be the single biggest issue in the technology industry in 2016. A lot of data
collected by IoT devices can be repurposed with evil intent, with one example
being utility meter data, which can be used to determine when a building is
unoccupied. Direct ownership and stewardship of data comes with costs which may
challenge many start-ups
Telfonica provide digital solutions that enable a whole new generation of services
and businesses all managed from an integrated and open FIWARE compliant

26
platform. The FIWARE platform provides a rather simple yet powerful set of APIs
(Application Programming Interfaces) that ease the development of Smart
Applications in multiple vertical sectors. The specifications of these APIs are public
and royalty-free. Besides, an open source reference implementation of each of the
FIWARE components is publicly available so that multiple FIWARE providers can
emerge faster in the market with a low-cost proposition.
TM Forum, the global industry association for digital business, recently announced a
joint collaboration program (JCP) with the FIWARE Foundation to co-develop a
Smart City API Reference Architecture enabling portability and interoperability of
smart city solutions as well as a repeatable data economy model. This initiative
presents significant opportunities for cities, communications service providers,
technology suppliers and other parties to realize their part in the API economy,
which according to IBM, will be a $2.2 Trillion market by 2018.
Recognizing its growing adoption by cities, TM Forum will incorporate the FIWARE
NGSI API into its Smart City API Reference Architecture, thereby exposing FIWARE to
TM Forum’s diverse global ecosystem of city governments, communications service
providers, technology suppliers and global enterprises. The FIWARE NGSI API provides
access to contextual information about what is going on in cities in near real-time,
and can be adopted by cities, service providers and technology suppliers who wish
to benefit from and monetize real-time open data.
There is no doubt that cities providing a digital platform business model will unlock
innovation and economic growth for their whole population as well as the broader
ecosystem of service providers and suppliers. Smart Cities will no longer be only
about performing a more efficient management of municipal services but
transforming cities into enablers of an Economy of Data !!
8 : Blockchain Phenomena : More disruptive than you think

27
Every once in a while i get astonished by radical new technologies…for those of you
read my blog or attend my Digital Telco training workshops know that 5G and
Graphene are tops on my list. Now something else has taken hold of my fascination.
And its here NOW not in 2020 !!
In the Telco industry we are so thrilled ( with good cause ) about the potential of LTE
and 5G… AI , IoT , Big Data , Robots , Drones , Balloons or flying cars with on board
Internet and IP TV..and yes we are so proud of Mobile Money…how the Telcos stole
a lead from the Banks changed the lives of millions of unbanked in the developing
countries….yawn !!
Yes…something else is lurking like a Shark ready to breach to tear apart and
rearrange the fabric of the Digital economy….a technology that will change the
world in ways you cannot imagine…AND all the incumbents in the Financial , Data ,
Telco , OTT players , Internet industries are in the firing line…noo its not BITCOIN…….its
Blockchain !! The Blockchain technology is so simple that a dummy can understand
its implications …present company included
Over 30 years, no theorist of the digital age has better explained the next big thing
than Don Tapscott. For example, in Wikinomics Tapscott was the first to show how
the Internet provides the first global platform for mass collaboration. Now, he writes
about a profound technological shift that will change how the world does
business—and everything else—using blockchain technology, which powers the
digital currency Bitcoin. Tapscott’s seminal book on Blockchain revolution is
available on Amazon. Must read.
The Internet as we know it is great for collaboration and communication, but is
deeply flawed when it comes to commerce and privacy. Blockchain, is the first
native digital medium for peer-to-peer value exchange. Its protocol establishes the
rules—in the form of globally distributed computations and heavy duty encryption—
that ensure the integrity of the data traded among billions of devices without going
through a trusted third party. Trust is hard-coded into the platform. That’s why we call
it the Trust Protocol. It acts as a ledger of accounts, a database, a notary, a sentry
and clearing house, all by consensus.
Although many opportunities for the blockchain require a digital currency, Bitcoin is
only one application of this great innovation in computer science. The blockchain
can hold any legal document, from deeds and marriage licenses to educational
degrees and birth certificates. Call it the World Wide Ledger. It enables smart
contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations, decentralized government
services, and transactions among things. A trusted decentralised Data storage in the
Cloud ? hmmm …bye bye Amazon ?

28
The Internet of Everything needs a Ledger of Everything: the blockchain is a truly
open, distributed, global platform that fundamentally changes what we can do
online, how we do it, and who can participate. If we take the idea that through a
huge shared network we can transfer and verify data, value, names, labels or
documents, there is not an industry in existence that blockchain could not turn
upside down.In the same way the Internet has always allowed near-zero marginal
costs of distribution , Blockchain will allow near zero marginal cost in financial
transactions and data storage.
Did you get it ? With Blockchain a migrant worker can send his hard earned cash
back home without going through Western Union or his Mobile Operator…at a
fraction of the cost. So sorry MPesa : The so-called Internet of Things will need
blockchains to manage ultimately trillions of daily transactions. Traditional financial
services companies cannot manage micropayments and settle payments, such as
when a factory light purchases power from a public power auction.
Blockchain technology can provide the suppliers of these services a means to
collaborate that delivers a greater share of the value to them. Just about everything
Uber does could be done by smart agents on a blockchain. The blockchain’s trust
protocol allows for cooperatives, or autonomous associations, to be formed and
controlled by people who come together to meet common needs. All revenues for
services, except for overhead, would go to members, who also control the platform
and make decisions. Bye Bye Alibaba ?
If current development projects, being run out of MIT, are any evidence, blockchain
social networks will have dramatically richer and more customizable functionality,
where data is protected and consumers empowered, compared to incumbents.
Existing vendors will either face disruption or embrace blockchain technologies to
deliver much deeper capability to their customers. Bye Bye Facebook ?
Using emerging software and technologies, we can instill intelligence into existing
infrastructure such as a power grid by adding smart devices that can communicate
with one another, reconfigure themselves depending upon availability of
bandwidth, storage, or other capacity and therefore resist interruption. This Internet
of Things depends on a Ledger of Things to track everything, ensure its reliability, and
pay for its contribution. There are potential applications across virtually every sector.
Transportation. Autonomous vehicles will get us safely wherever we need to go. They
will intuitively take the fastest route, avoid construction, handle tolls, park all on its
own, negotiate passing rates with other vehicles on the road, and communicate
with traffic lights. Hello Connected Car ?
Infrastructure. We will use smart devices to monitor the integrity and other critical
factors of road, rail lines, power and pipelines, bridges, runways, ports, and other

29
public and private infrastructure to detect problems and initiate a response both
rapidly and cost-effectively. Hello Smart City ?
Energy, waste, and water management. Traditional utilities can use blockchain-
enabled things for tracking production, distribution, consumption, and collection.
New entrants without infrastructure are planning to create new markets such as the
neighborhood energy microgrid. Hello IoT ?
You remember Bitcoin was imagined by an anonymous computer programmer (or
group of programmers—their identity is unknown) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in an
attempt to break the tie between the state and money. It was intended to be
the lingua franca of the internet—a currency born of, designed for and using the
attributes of the World Wide Web.
Instead of just being a trading currency, blockchain promises to be a secure form of
accounting for information more broadly. Put simply, before blockchain, if person A
wanted to make a secure and verifiable exchange (of money, goods, services, title
or information) with person B, they needed to go through a central trusted
intermediary (a bank, exchange, regulatory agency, government). Trust was
provided by these institutions, which in turn gained resources, control and power.
The promise of blockchain is to cut out these intermediaries, and, in so doing, disrupt
the world’s dominant power structures. Bye Bye Government ??
So what next ? Banks and Governments are getting into the Blockchain game. In the
UK, the government is testing blockchain technology to store and transfer NHS
records, and track public spending. The sprint to rebuild Wall Street with blockchain
is on, with two giant and heavily funded companies squaring off to be the only
game in town.R3CEV are technology innovators behind a consortium of 42 of the
world’s largest banks (and counting), working together to create the fabric of
blockchain for use in financial services.The question is can the likes of Goldman
Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Barclays, HSBC and BNP Paribas, all of whom are signed up,
work together? You bet they will ..unless they want to be consigned to the rubbish
bin of history.
And what about my BFF’s , the Telco Operators ? What are you going to do when
your Mobile Money platforms become irrelevant ? Or someone else “ leverages “ a
Blockchain platform to cash in on your IoT , Big Data , Digital Identity etc etc
initiatives ….did you catch my drift amigos ?..so wake up….or you will be chained to
a big block that will take you to the ocean bottom …ha ha
Contacts
email : sadiq.malik@broadbandgurus.net
skype : sadiqmalik1
web : www.broadbandgurus.net
Twitter : @sjm786
Linked In : za.linkedin.com/in/sadiqmaliksjm786/

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