By: Uri Gurevitz, Director, Market Insight & Strategy, Amdocs

Our digital devices are firmly entrenched as the digital hubs in our lives, connecting us to people, our homes, our jobs, and our things. Our phones and tablets make us smarter, more efficient, and connected with people around the world who we would otherwise never connect with. And yet, with all the technological advances we’ve made, and expect to continue to make, technology has not yet caught up to consumer expectations. This will begin to change.

We’ve been told all about network upgrades and faster connection speeds, seamless transitions to Wi-Fi and crystal clear VoLTE video calls. The promise of perfect communication is often replaced with dropped calls, and messages on our phones saying things like “reconnecting” as the video feed on a conversation tries to reestablish itself. Moving from Wi-Fi to 4G, or even 4G to 3G and vice-versa frequently results in data drops, which are particularly frustrating while listening to the radio over a device.

We’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of a seamless, always-on connected lifestyle. The longer we have to wait for reality to catch up, the more frustrated we will become. Hopefully 2016 will begin to see this frustration lifting as service providers continue to implement new networks, technologies and partners.

2016 will see more aspects of our lives becoming “smarter” as more industries go digital: incorporating new technologies and mobility, connecting silo’d systems as well as running advanced analytics to improve our quality of life. Digital and virtual objects and processes will replace physical ones as enterprises discover cloud efficiencies.

Parking is an example of how cities will get smarter. Technologically speaking, we have the potential to contact a parking lot through our phone, reserve a parking spot and pay for it, all before we even leave the house. Instead, we will spend thousands of hours in the coming year driving in circles in parking lots around the world, looking for a space.

And where are service providers in all this? Service providers will continue to cope with declines in their traditional voice revenues. Consumers will continue to move to over-the-top (OTT) alternatives (e.g. Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber, Google and Netflix). Service providers will continue to roll out new enhanced voice offerings which are more efficient on their networks and provide an improved customer experience (e.g. RCS, Wi-Fi calling), highlighting better quality, less battery use and enhanced data features (e.g. RCS which enables consumers to send files or pictures while talking.)

Moreover, service providers will continue to compete over customers, rolling out bundles of integrated products which combine communications (both fixed and mobile) and other innovative offerings made possible via partnerships.

However, emphasis will be placed on identifying and promoting new network services which are based on new network technologies (NFV, SDN). Other focus areas include providing new IT services to SMEs and enterprises (e.g. security) and partnerships.

Service providers will continue to roll out mobile payment services. They will also continue to position themselves as partners to the business segment, assisting them to become “smarter” and more efficient. Service providers will offer them integrated communications products, various managed IT services via the cloud (e.g. storage, security) and cloud connectivity.

We will continue to see competition between traditional and new players over who will be the first to roll out services that will be widely adopted in industries in transition (e.g. financial services) and which monetization model will prevail.