Blockchain & The Telecoms Industry IIT RTC Conference, Chicago October

Transcription

1 Blockchain & The Telecoms Industry IIT RTC Conference,

2 Dean Bubley & Disruptive Analysis Tech/telecom analyst & strategic consulting since 1991 Futurism, Forecasting & anti-forecasting Cross-silo, contrarian, independent Often provocative. Sometimes obscure. Occasionally wrong. Network Tech, Policy & Business Models Communications Apps & Services Telco-Futurism

3 The Future has broad drivers, beyond telecoms Chapter by Dean Bubley: The Future of the Phone Call Other Chapters cover: AI & machine-learning Analytics & Big Data Contextual computing Blockchain & shared ledgers Crowds & the Sharing Economy Wearables & quantified-self 3D-printing IoT, Robots & drones Autonomous vehicles Longevity & human enhancement Green Tech Financial systems & money Political & social change

4 Wearables & future wellbeing Analytics & Machine learning Urbanisation & smart cities IoT & sensors FinTech & Blockchain Biomedical tech & human enhancement Opportunity & value arises at tech intersections Voice/Video Comms, Collaboration, Context & WebRTC Future Networks: 5G, WiFi, LPWAN, SDN/NFV

5 What is a blockchain? Previous block of transactions Transaction 1 Transaction 2 Transaction 3. Transaction N Transaction A Transaction B Transaction C. Transaction Z Consensus calculation performed & validated by many nodes & proof of work Encrypted Hash Next block of transactions

6 Why is this so interesting? No central intermediary for proof Immutable (non-changeable) Changes the nature of trust Which may have huge ramifications although some visions are almost sci-fi Shared ownership, read, write Extensible ( side-chains ) Potentially much lower back-office costs but also risks & problems, eg power consumption, legacy integration

7 Different types of blockchain & DLTs Original Public BitCoin Blockchain: The Blockchain Other Public Blockchains eg Ripple, Ethereum Consortium Blockchain (or Distributed Ledger) Private or permissioned Blockchain (or Distributed Ledger). and also hybrids, side-chains, DAOs and various other innovations

8 Yes, it is a bit over-hyped

9 Many ways to solve any problem Don t get too precious about any one technology or platform

10 Blockchain options at many telecom-industry intersections Network Roam & w/sale Billing / OSS RTC IoT Services Data Integrity Micropayments Identity Smart contracts

11 Timescales matter: How fast does data change? Public & some private blockchains are extremely slow & may have latency of minutes or more Millisec Second Minute Hour Day Month Year Network Mgmt Balance Management Sporadic IoT data / keep-alives Interconnect Reconciliation Number Porting

12 Slow movement by telecoms industry, but accelerating Orange investment in Chain Verizon investment in Filament Du prototype for healthcare IT in Dubai Ericsson pitch for data integrity IBM talking about payments & other uses Some generalists getting telco focus, eg GuardTime & Sytel Some visible startups, mostly not telecom-specific A few early conference presentations & events Lots of lab evaluations (mostly undisclosed) Still quite a lot of scepticism on near-term use

13 Standards & industry bodies mostly missing

14 Forecasts & conclusions Existing telecom IT & security processes & mechanisms will adopt BC/DLT only slowly Areas with intermediaries (eg roaming, number porting) may be early Possible: Blockchain for enhancement (eg LI integrity & compliance) New areas should see niches launches / experiments in 2017 Data integrity-as-a-service (especially for IoT) Telecoms involvement in verticals (banking, health, e-govt) NFV & maybe esim or spectrum-management, but maybe Watch for (or start!) consortia / standards initiatives Maybe Hyperledger for Telcos working group? GSMA perhaps doing something with IPX? Plenty of scope for surprises & setbacks but it s real

15 Skype:disruptiveanalysis appear.in/disruptiveanalysis