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Our predictions for 2016 – By Ross Knapman
OK, it’s that time when we all begin to focus, look ahead and determine the changes we make within our business for the year ahead. In the world of telecoms, these changes are fast-moving and vast. At Deep Blue, we enjoy keeping up-to-date with technology developments, so we thought we would share some of the trends and predictions we anticipate for 2016:
GAME CHANGERS
Cloud based technology and applications will continue to grow as business owners recognise the advantages. Further demand for joined up voice anywhere such as the office, home and out and about, as well as hosted IT services and video calling, will increase as improved broadband creates less reliance on traditional telephony hardware. Business by business, area by area, how we work will continue to evolve with technical development and improving upload speeds.
We will become more mobile than ever (although there’s plenty of room for improvement!). We should see continued expansion of applications and tools allowing us to interact with each other via mobile devices, home-based electronics and automotive tools. There’s even a term for this “The Digital Mesh”…not Mess!!
IoT (Internet of Things) and wearable technologies will continue their rise and with a combination of new robotics and AIS (Artificial Intelligence Solutions) we should see this development go mainstream in 2016.
Big Data will become even more relevant as we see a shift from connected devices to intelligent devices (i.e. computing capabilities). For example, Pizza Hut is testing the world’s first ‘subconscious menu’ using eye-tracking technology to predict the customer choices.
KEY CHALLENGES
New players, with lots of financial muscle and no experience just looking for the quick win continue to be disruptive to both the industry and customer. We have seen it all before, but it won’t stop it happening. Remember, modern telecommunications is now a service industry and not about selling on low price.
With on-going growth in digitalization and IoT there will be an increase in security threats and hacks, unfortunately, this looms over all business today. As such, there will be an increased focus on detecting and responding to these threats faster than ever as well as the introduction of more efficient blocking measures.
ECONOMIC OUTLOOK
Economic volatility will continue to be a factor, so any product like Cloud telephony that reduces, or even eliminates, upfront capital outlay will be in demand. Customer confidence will be a key driver to continued recovery.
Buying habits will continue to be driven by technology with 2015 statistics suggesting that most people complete 57% of the purchase process before even engaging with suppliers. We believe this percentage will continue to increase during 2016.
IN CONCLUSION
Despite the challenges out there, the telecoms industry continues to be resilient and adaptive, growing and changing, as demand requires. At Deep Blue we take this ethos to heart, providing customer specific solutions that can change to the world around them. So if your New Year’s resolution is to overhaul your telecoms, why not give Deep Blue a call (0333 240 9100) today.
And who would have thought… we used to sell phones and fax machines a few years ago…Happy New Year!!
Flood Update Including Tadcaster Bridge
The heavy rain and wind in December has continued into the New Year, hampering clear up operations and extending the flooding into other parts of the country. Openreach now has MBORC (matters beyond our reasonable control) measures in place in the following areas:
- North East Scotland
- South East Scotland
- South West Scotland
- Swansea & West Wales
- South Yorkshire & Chesterfield
- West Yorkshire
- Humber
- Cumbria
- North Wales
Re-provision of resources to these areas means that even in the South East and South West of the country lead times are longer than usual while engineers work to clear the backlog of jobs.
Many of you will have seen the footage of the Tadcaster Bridge partially collapsing after being undermined by the high waters of the river Wharfe, as well as cutting the two sides of Tadcaster off from each other, the collapse also lead to the damaging of utility pipes including a gas main and telecom cabling. Work has been carried out to move the copper and fibre lines across to the other side of the bridge, a key stage in restoring normal service to the area.
Deep Blue were lucky to escape the flooding, despite much of it being on our doorstep. Some of our customers were not so lucky but we are pleased to say that service has now been restored to all of them.
We wish to take this time to say thank you to all impacted customers for their patience and understanding over the last couple of weeks, thank you to our out of hours staff who coped well with challenging circumstances and to our engineers for giving up their time (including New Year) to get some of the worst hit sites back up and running so quickly!
Ofcom leaves users free to switch
Thanks to new Ofcom rules, users will now be able to exit mobile, landline or broadband contracts without facing penalties if the monthly price is increased.
Providers will now have to give at least 30 days notice of any increase in monthly subscription prices to end users. If the user then decides to switch, they will not have to pay any termination charges. The rules will also apply if the provider keeps the monthly price the same but decreases the number of minutes/amount of data included in the package.
The change follows Ofcom’s investigations of over 1000 complaints, which found that many providers had increased their prices having originally promised ‘fixed-price’ deals.