Bangkok--5 Nov--Ericsson
Ericsson arranged the Business Innovation Forum 2013 with among industry leaders in Tokyo to share their views on urbanization from both a society and business perspective, and more specifically what impact ICT has within those areas.
Today, over half of the global population lives in cities and the growth of urban areas is predicted to continue. 45 percent of people living in cities today own a smartphone and a large share of mobile data traffic is already being generated in metro areas. City people rely on their devices to ease the challenges of everyday life, and having good mobile coverage is now ranked among the top five satisfaction factors in cities. However, in many cities around the world, app coverage is surprisingly limited.
The majority of mobile traffic originates in cities and urban users expect instant, reliable access to their apps, wherever they go. In the same time, it is in these urban environments that the challenge to provide a good connection is the greatest, particularly for mobile data, the so called "app coverage". App coverage is the probability that the network will deliver sufficient performance to run a particular application at an acceptable level of quality. As city people have high expectations on app performance app coverage becomes key. Providing a good user experience will always involve a balancing act between networks, devices and apps.
Douglas Gilstrap, Chief Strategist of the Ericsson Group, concluded the day by saying: “It’s not only about speed anymore, network quality including latency is what most speakers addressed as a key priority when distributing services over the networks."
“The day focused on urbanization, and we learned about Japan’s Ministry of Information and Communication who believes ICT investments in elderly care and social services ought to increase. Square Enix told us their business and distribution model has been transformed as a consequence of fast network access. And NTT DOCOMO believes they will see their revenue grow from USD 6 billion in 2012 to USD 11 billion in 2015 from new businesses.
“These discussions showcase not only the requirements on the networks, key to us at Ericsson, but also that ICT brings new opportunities as sectors in society and different industries are entering different phases of transformation.”
Watch Gilstrap’s comments on urbanization on YouTube: http://youtu.be/1M2HeXU715s