DTWS: Beware ‘pilot-itis’ – how telcos can really co-create with enterprises
Find out how communications service providers can go beyond connectivity to co-create true 5G partnerships with their enterprise customers in a wide range of verticals including automotive and healthcare.
Dawn Bushaus
DTWS: Beware ‘pilot-itis’ – how telcos can really co-create with enterprises
A popular set of sessions at Digital Transformation World Series (DTWS) this week explored how communications service providers (CSPs) can go beyond connectivity to co-create true 5G partnerships with their enterprise customers in a wide range of verticals including automotive and healthcare.
Many speakers agreed that the Covid-19 pandemic is accelerating digital transformation in all sectors and that CSPs have a critical role to play in co-creating 5G-enabled applications. Joann O’Brien, TM Forum’s VP of Ecosystems, cautioned, however, that operators should avoid “pilot-itis” – that is, they should not spend too much time experimenting. Instead, they should extrapolate learnings from key proofs of concept an apply them through an intimate understanding of the needs of each industry they are targeting.
Erik Brenneis, CEO, Internet of Things at Vodafone Business, kicked off the session with data from the company’s annual IoT Barometer survey of tens of thousands of Vodafone customers and other market players which shows that nearly 90% believe IoT is “absolutely critical” to the success of their businesses.
“It brings them new revenue streams, new services and cost savings,” Brenneis said. “At the same time, it is very important that all of this is reliable and secure, because businesses nowadays rely on IoT. Seventy-seven percent of all businesses, say that companies who do not embrace it, are very likely to fall behind their competitors.”
5G in manufacturing
Vodafone and Ford Motor Company are collaborating in an important 5G IoT project called 5GEM (5G Enabled Manufacture), a 22-month project supported by a £3.9 million ($5.1 million) investment from the UK government. Other participants include ATS, HSSMI, Lancaster University, TM Forum, TWI and Vacuum Furnace Engineering.
The goal of the project is to explore the use of 5G in manufacturing to connect machines, allowing real-time feedback, control, analysis and remote expert support. TM Forum is planning to contribute Open APIs for key purposes including IoT devices, ensuring portability and scalability of the solution across the globe, and management of connectivity through network as a service (NaaS).
“We are bringing 14 new electrified vehicles to market this year and many more in the years beyond that, so it’s really important for us to think about: How do we do that differently? What are we going to need to build the factory of the future?” said Chris White, Electrification Manager in Ford Motor Company’s European Powertrain Manufacturing department.
“What we want is a mobile solution that brings us faster connections,” he said.
As part of the 5GEM project, the team is looking at how wireless can help with use cases such as laser welding of batteries, a fundamental requirement for electric vehicles. The team will evaluate 5G as well as other technologies like Wi-Fi 6.
Interestingly, White noted that some of the conspiracy theories about 5G have become a challenge. “There has been some reticence from the people we work with that we’re going to put 5G into people’s workplaces when it’s not there today,” he said, adding that it’s important to allay workers’ fears. “We know we feel very comfortable with the technology, but equally we need to address people’s concerns and ensure they are taken seriously.”
Accelerating digitization of healthcare
Healthcare is another important vertical for CSPs to target with services that go beyond connectivity. David Thomas, Managing Principal, Global Health Strategy at TELUS Health, discussed his company’s role in co-creating interoperable digital health services that focus on a proactive, holistic approach to health rather than simply responding to sickness.
TELUS, a Canadian CSP, launched TELUS Health in 2007 after acquiring a services business called Emergis from Bell Canada. Today it is one of few CSPs with a successful healthcare services business.
The healthcare vertical faces challenges very similar to those CSPs are facing, namely a huge number of siloed legacy systems with lots of fragmented data. Covid-19 is shining a bright spotlight on these issues for both telcos and healthcare organizations.
“We see the challenges of getting good information from the data to the right people at the right time,” Thomas said, adding that the healthcare industry “is spending billions to combat the systemic fragmentation.”
Over the last 10 years, TELUS has invested over $3 billion in transforming Canada’s healthcare sector. “We've built a network connecting more than 50% of primary care physicians and pharmacists to more than 50% of Canadian citizens,” Thomas said, adding that the company is focusing on resolving interoperability issues “to make data and insights available at the right place and the right time.”
Thomas ended his presentation with a call for collaboration among CSPs and healthcare organizations to resolve interoperability challenges globally by acting locally. He advocates for a “global set of operators” who use the same standards to ensure interoperability but also build trust as local operators with “local knowledge that is clinically relevant and culturally sensitive.”
“We can reduce the collective risk to all of us if we use the power of a common, interoperable, secure and scalable solution,” he said. “To summarize our collective challenge: global health unlocks economic performance as much as poor health hinders our potential. And the problem of getting the right information to the right person at the right time requires interoperability and the movement of data across our providers.”
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