It's one thing to make predictions, but it's another to assess how those predictions turned out. One month into 2023, Mattias Fridström, Chief Evangelist at Arelion, kindly agreed to scrutinize his 2022 forecast with us.
As you will hear, Mattias has been at Arelion (formerly Telia) for a long time. From his perspective within a tier 1 provider, he has an outstanding view of the industry. He uses that vantage point to write a forward-looking article every year, reviewing trends he expects to see in the days ahead.
We were thrilled that Mattias visited us at TeleGeography Explains the Internet to wade through those predictions from days past.
We start with the top three global carrier trends. Listen in for a closer examination of network security, utilization of the public internet, and disaggregated networks.
We also consider issues that arose in 2022—both anticipated and unanticipated—like skills gaps, cost increases/shortages like “Chipmaggedon," and global issues outside the telecom industry.
Naturally, this leads us to 2023. Mattias gives us a preview of his new article and his outlook for the next 11 months. How will he fare? You'll have to check back in a year's time.
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From This Episode:
- Peruse Mattias' Original Predictions for 2022
- How Global Events Impact the Internet
- What to Know About Fiber’s Role in Ukraine’s Information War
Key Takeaways
Evolving Security Priorities
While network security measures like DDoS protection and firewalls were predicted to be increasingly crucial for 2022, the unforeseen war in Europe led to new threats like network sabotage. Consequently, physical security, such as cable vulnerability and repair speed, became a major focus for customers.
Increased Enterprise Adoption of Raw Bandwidth and Public Internet
A key prediction that "really panned out" during 2022 was the trend of enterprises moving away from traditional managed services, like MPLS networks, toward demanding "raw bandwidth" (like wavelengths or raw Ethernet) or utilizing the public internet to access cloud applications.
This shift was driven by enterprises developing more sophisticated IT departments capable of managing their own networks and seeing the public internet as a way to connect data centers or access cloud services. While this trend was successful, the discussion highlighted the challenge that the public internet, being a collection of "70,000 different networks," offers highly variable performance depending on the provider, making it important for enterprises to understand the underlying backbone quality.
Persistent Cost Pressures and the Push for Disaggregation
The discussion confirmed predictions that certain carrier costs would not decrease, notably data centers, power, and skilled labor. Data center providers increased pricing, leveraging carriers' difficulty moving equipment, citing rising real estate and power costs.
Power costs, especially in Europe, increased dramatically due to the war and reduced gas supply, impacting carrier operational expenses.
The cost of skilled people also rose, although recent layoffs by hyperscalers might offer future relief. These cost pressures, combined with component shortages ("Chipmageddon"), are driving the industry toward greater network openness and disaggregation. This involves buying network components from different vendors and integrating them.
Greg Bryan
Greg is Senior Manager, Enterprise Research at TeleGeography. He's spent the last decade and a half at TeleGeography developing many of our pricing products and reports about enterprise networks. He is a frequent speaker at conferences about corporate wide area networks and enterprise telecom services. He also hosts our podcast, TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
