Emerging tech to transform ICT ecosystem

Brahima Sanou, director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau. [Photo source: ITU]

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The Internet of things (IOT), cloud computing, big data analytics, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) will be at the forefront of the next digital revolution, according to the latest International Telecommunication Union (ITU) report.

The ITU's Measuring the Information Society Report (MISR) 2017 presents a global and regional overview of the latest developments regarding ICT based on internationally comparable data and agreed methodologies.

The release of the MISR coincides with the ITU's World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Symposium, and also features the ICT Development Index. The 2017 edition of the ITU symposium is taking place this week in Hammamet in Tunisia.

In the report, the ITU says concurrent advances in emerging ICT trends like IOT, big data, AI and cloud "will enable tremendous innovations and fundamentally transform business, government and society".

The United Nation's ICT agency points out that a digital revolution will unfold over the coming decades with enormous opportunities, challenges and implications.

"To harness these benefits, countries will need to create conditions that support the deployment of next-generation networks and service infrastructures. In order to track the growth and impact of these emerging ICT trends, new global indicators will need to be put in place."

Brahima Sanou, director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau, hopes the report will be of great value to the ITU membership, particularly for policy-makers, the ICT industry and others working towards the building of an inclusive global information society.

"Fully harnessing the economic and social benefits of the digital revolution require efficient and affordable physical infrastructures and services, more advanced user skills, and internationally comparable benchmarks and indicators to support enabling public policies."

The ITU is of the view that each one of the identified emerging ICT components has a specific role to play in advancing the ecosystem.

IOT will greatly expand the digital footprint, according to the report findings. "In addition to people, organisations and information resources, it will connect objects equipped with digital information sensing, processing and communication capabilities. This ubiquitous infrastructure will generate abundant data that can be used to achieve efficiency gains in the production and distribution of goods and services, and improve human life in innovative ways."

Big data analytics, on the other hand, will extract useful knowledge from digital information flows. This will enable better descriptions, understanding and predicting developments to improve management and policy decisions, states the report. "Making sense of proliferating information requires a workforce with appropriate analytical, computational and methodological skills, as well as a high-capacity ICT infrastructure."

In terms of cloud and other architectures, the report notes these will lower the entry barriers to scalable computing resources. "They are starting to deliver flexible and on-demand computational services over the Internet, lowering the fixed costs of ICT infrastructure, to the benefit of small and medium-sized organisations.

The MISR also states AI will help human beings with better decision-making. "In order to achieve this objective, every algorithm needs to be tailored carefully to existing data and the objectives pursued. This requires considerable human expertise in machine learning and large datasets to train algorithms.

"Harnessing the benefits of advanced ICTs requires appropriate infrastructures, services and skills. Networks will have to support diverse quality-of-service demands from applications and users while delivering robust and ubiquitous connectivity. This will require the rollout of wireless IOT platforms, and relying on network virtualisation and improved fibre connectivity. Moreover, it will require the development of advanced ICT skills among users."

The report further indicates the aforementioned ICT trends have a significant role to contribute in achieving each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In 2015, United Nations members adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes a set of 17 SDGs to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change.