Through the Internet, radio has a greater reach than microwaves, television is more effective and cheaper than satellite, streaming platforms allow you to watch the year's film releases from the comfort of your home, and you can also make video calls to anywhere in the world.
There is no doubt that information and communication technologies (ICT) have been reinvented to make humanity more connected. However, in order for these objectives to become a reality today, intensive work has been done on broadband expansion and the deployment of fiber optics. 5G is now available, although not on a massive scale, but these goals will be achieved in the short term. It is also expected that 6G will be a global reality within everyone's reach; the more bandwidth there is, the more communication channels will be available with a click. Within this panorama, it is worth asking, apart from the Internet, what other technology complements and reinforces telecommunications?
Beyond 5G, 6G and advances in ultra-fast bandwidth, there is robotics and its growing impact on the telecommunications industry. This impact is related to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), which has encouraged the experimentation of cyborg technology to strengthen telecommunications. In this branch, mobile and fixed telephony is the one that has been most transformed by robotics, and telephony, or rather, remote customer service, will triple in the next ten years.
The telecommunications market has become one in which robotics and artificial intelligence will have the greatest impact. These two technologies, fundamental branches to explain the transformation we are experiencing, are the basis of competitiveness in the coming years. Now, how can we quantify what is happening in the sector?
Robots have recently made over 4 billion phone calls. What trend can be drawn from this dynamic? The ratio of these types of connections to those made by humans has been converging exponentially. Robots now answer phones, indicate which menu option to choose based on the request, and even generate reporting reports.
Robotics technology is present in the deployment of the IoT, sensors plus ultra-high-speed internet are beginning to mark a point of no return in terms of the impact of robotics on everyday life. For this reason, the ICT industry is strengthening itself in this area in order to respond to the challenge represented by the automation of communications and the fundamental role played in this by the deployment of increasingly faster and more efficient internet networks. But are we really prepared for this evolution? Who as a society will have access to this new trend in telecommunications technology in the medium term?
We are currently in the readjustment period of the ICT revolution. This period is between the period of installation of new technologies (ICT, Internet) and a greater number of deployments taking advantage of the full potential of the technologies.
This period of readjustment would be characterized by polarization, increased inequality, and a growing imbalance between the economy due to the installation of previous technology and the regulatory social system that would not work for the second period to come. Therefore, if we want to move towards a new paradigm for the second period, with greater well-being in which technology is used in all areas of society and for new ways of working, the solution lies in how to make it accessible to everyone to reduce the digital divide.
The actors involved must combine their efforts, since, if robotics is an essential part of the evolution of ICT, we must be prepared to sustain its impact on the IoT, in the deployment of 5G, 6G and FTTx networks in a society in which artificial intelligence is gradually taking control of telecommunications, but which are not yet within everyone's reach.