We all live connected lives today, according to Glenn Lurie, president & CEO, AT&T Mobility & Consumer Operations, but for a new generation of customers, this means being connected 24x7, throughout their lives.
As a result, customers demand ubiquitous, reliable, high-speed connections for an increasing number of applications. Operators will have to face up to this demand and provide for it.
Speaking at the Mobile World Congress event in Shanghai last week, Lurie said that video traffic was simply exploding. There are one billion users today viewing video on mobile handsets, and this figure is set to double by 2021, according to Lurie.
To add to this traffic growth, he expects there will be 75.4 billion IoT connections by 2025, up from 15.4 billion in 2015. As a result of these and other applications, the volume of mobile traffic will grow to ten times current traffic levels by 2021.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) has addressed this growth by investing $140 billion between 2011 and 2015, mainly in the areas of spectrum, virtualization and geographic expansion. The company is also helping drive innovation by setting up AT&T Foundry innovation centers all around the world.
Lurie identified three main applications that AT&T is focusing on for the future.
Video
AT&T just made a $63 billion investment in US satellite provider DirecTV Group Inc. (NYSE: DTV). According to Lurie, the company made this move to better understand and leverage video growth. The operator is now the largest provider of linear TV in the world, and "wants to leverage the asset base to create integrated solutions for customers," he said.
Automobiles
"The car is the next great device," claims Lurie. Today, AT&T is working with 19 automobile brands with over 8 million connected cars globally. AT&T has developed the Global SIM, a platform for shipping SIM cards that connect anywhere in the world. Mostly aimed at automobile partners, these SIMs work worldwide, facilitating connected car production.
AT&T has also opened the AT&T Drive Studio, aimed at creating technology for connected cars and facilitating telematics innovation.
Smart cities
Lurie is also a believer in IoT, and particularly in smart cities. This was the third area of focus for AT&T that Lurie mentioned, saying that smart cities will be a $1.5 trillion market by 2020.
Lurie's perspective is consistent with most other operators, in that virtualization and capacity are key initiatives, and video and IoT are important future applications.
However, Lurie's enthusiasm for connected cars is greater than most, and it does seem that AT&T has invested more in this area than its peers. This isn't just in the area of driverless cars, but includes applications such as diagnostics and data collection. However, should driverless cars take off in the near term, the operator has well established relationships supplying connectivity to 19 different car manufacturers, and will likely keep adding more.
— Aditya Kishore, Practice Leader, Video Transformation, Telco Transformation