During Frost & Sullivan’s second annual Growth, Innovation and Leadership (GIL) event, South African telecommunications company Neotel’s CEO Sunil Joshi said that four major mega trends exist that will be important for the overall success of telecommunication companies in Africa.
“Infrastructure, urbanisation, connecting the unconnected and regional integration are the major trends for telecommunication companies. At Neotel we are focusing on infrastructure investments, namely fibre, and connecting people and businesses,” said Joshi.
Frost & Sullivan’s operations director Hendrik Malan added that more industries should be embracing Machine-To-Machine (M2M) communication technology. “Soon we will have more devices than people; an estimated 50 billion devices in total by 2020. This makes increased levels of automation for data assembly and interpretation important in order to operate devices effectively,” he said.
One Mega Trend that will shape the way in which Africa does business, is Innovation to Zero. According to Phil Howarth, Partner at Frost & Sullivan Africa, it is the practice where companies strive for a world with zero pollution, zero crime and zero disease.
“No matter what your career function, Mega Trends need to be a cornerstone of long term strategic thinking within a business. In research and development, they should influence budgets and technology focus; in marketing, they should influence customer strategy,” he said.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
