No technology in today’s market has more hype around it than Blockchain. Blockchain start-ups are seeing millions if not billions of dollars in investment and all kinds of industry verticals are expected to be influenced by it.
Across the Carrier industry there’s a lot of curiosity about how Blockchain will influence the way we operate. Blockchain’s immediate potential is difficult to gage but we know that there’s huge room for improvement in operational efficiency and legacy processes need to evolve and change. The challenge is to evolve our operations without adding new complexity.
With use cases, Proof of Concepts and Blockchain-based businesses emerging, the initial hurdle is sharing this information and enabling widespread adoption.
Smart technologies are reimagining our industry and that’s being reflected in how we run our operations. Blockchain is only a few years old but we are already seeing the speed at which it’s growing. The potential uses of Blockchain across our industry can deliver real value by improving the ways in which we interoperate.
To keep-up with changes in the industry, we need to move faster and become more agile. 27% of telecoms and technology executives are planning an investment of $5 million or more in Blockchain in the coming years, according to Deloitte.
At our recent Annual Conference, Shahar Steiff, VP New Technologies of PCCW Global discussed “Blockchain 101”. He gave a key presentation about Blockchain, the use cases of our industry and what we need to achieve together.
PCCW Global and Colt Technology Services have collaborated with Clear, a Blockchain start-up company to demonstrate that inter-carrier settlement times can be reduced from hours to minutes by Blockchain technology.
Shahar discussed the Proof of Concept (PoC) undertaken by PCCW Global and Colt that ascertains if the advantages offered by Blockchain technology can be applied to make inter-carrier settlements more efficient, reliable, and scalable. It reduces fraud and settlement times and increases efficiency for telcos.
The PoC marks the beginning of how Blockchain can revolutionize the telecom industry. It is a great start, but as an industry we need to adopt Blockchain on a wider scale.
Extending the use of Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning for other telecom and Carrier applications can lead to billable on-demand services across the Carrier ecosystem. Blockchain has the potential to go beyond that by streamlining an organization’s internal processes, reduce fraud losses and enable new services to be built on the technology.
There’s truly incredible potential for the future of Blockchain. For the real value of new technologies like Blockchain to be fully recognized, the entire industry needs to come together to harness it.
To be successful we need to create a structure that can bring everyone together with clear frameworks to be defined and implemented. i3forum is a tremendous resource for businesses of all kinds and we want it to be the first place to look when addressing new challenges like the adoption of Blockchain.
Standardization and collaboration is important for creating momentum and driving change in our industry.
If you want to work together to make Blockchain and other new technologies a reality, we encourage you and your organization to get involved.
Get in touch: info@i3forum.org