With millions of subscribers, a variety of new products, bundled and customized solutions, the operational support services like service configuration, order fulfillment, customer care, and billing are becoming increasingly complex. Hence, the cost of handling these operations require resources and different tools, thus, increasing the financial overhead.

Telecommunication providers need to upgrade their IT and connectivity infrastructure and focus on providing data and voice services that are high quality, reliable, and affordable. Security of the networks has become a major priority for the telcos and they are facing challenges with the emergence of new threats that are powered by new technologies. So, a number of operational and technical innovations are needed to meet customer expectations of complete system security from network till the device level.

One more challenge waiting in the wings for telcos and ISPs is the impact of Internet of Things (IoT) that is leading to explosive growth in the connected devices. This growth is generating billions and trillions of new data sources and thus, it is expected that this growth will push the data to be handled by networks to zettabytes per year.
5G Networks – The telecom carriers are working on providing the 5G networks to spark an enormous wave of faster internet. While the technology has not yet been fully defined, carriers are proceeding with the lab and field trials in their race to stay competitive.
The full, mass-market 5G coverage is expected by approximately 2020.
Secure and reliable services – Modern telecom environment offers a rich set of services that need reliable and secure authentication. The number of smartphones equipped with biometric fingerprint readers is increasing. This technology is also being used by retailers, financial institutions, government, and even schools, to verify identities.
Other biometric mechanisms like facial or retinal recognition, are also telecom trends and are likely to pick up steam in the coming years. An increasingly large number of telecom companies are adopting biometric SIM cards for curbing crimes related to mobile phones and terrorist attacks as well.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) – The addition of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to smartphones will bring the next shift in technology, according to Huawei,
AI allows smartphones to perform highly sophisticated functions such as augmented reality (remember Pokémon Go), speech recognition, indoor navigation, and even learning the daily tasks and preferences of an individual to enable digital assistants like Siri and Alexa.
More info: field technician