The key driving force for the socio-economic development of a country comes from the telecommunication industry. The growing competition between telecom providers is increasing consumer demand for better connectivity, speed and wireless technology. Telecom towers are facing a challenge to fulfil these demand but advanced technology has made the process easier.

the past 30 years, the demand for broadcast and wireless communication has fueled in dramatic way which led to increased number of communication tower construction and maintenance. This is projected to evolve over different generations of network communications. The expedition started with ‘0G’ mobile telecom service (MTS) to contemporary long term evolution (LTE)/4G, 5G and Cloud. Especially mobile telecommunication, it has turned to be a necessity to everyone. Major boost to the mobile industry took place with the advent of second generation (2G) mobile telecommunication as it was intriguing for customers to browse internet on mobile phones coupled with clear voice calling facilities. At present, most countries possess 4G connectivity, a highly dense networking system. It facilitates enhanced data transfer rate and real time audio and video calling. However, developed countries like Japan and U.S. are thriving on 4.5G and striving for 5G network communications.

like At&T are unveiling its plan for 5G roadmap which entirely focus on three pillars like Mobile 5G, Edge Computing and Fixed Wireless. Other well-known industrial IoT solutions provider like Wind River has joined hands with British Telecom to establish edge cloud computing applications. Evolution in cloud-based services for roll-out of 4G LTE and mobile users across the globe has soared the network investment by carriers, has tremendously driven the demand for the telecom towers market. Apart from that, tower sharing is also playing an essential role for propelling the telecom industry owing to its cost-effectiveness and faster data rollout.

As every cloud has a silver lining, telecom towers at the initial setups and rolling out of these technologies are resulting in high cost that is leading key market players to adopt alternative cost-effective strategies.

Besides that, the growth of telecom tower market is directly proportional to the number of telecom service providers in any region and mobile subscriber density which remains a major challenge. Also, service provider experience restriction due to permissible height limits when installing multiple towers in small zones. Other factors that deter the market growth is side effects of high frequency microwaves or radio waves on environment and human and stringent rules and regulations of government towards installation of telecom towers suppress the telecom authorities.

Remains a critical force for disruption, innovation and growth across multiple industries. Research shows that the telecom industry will grow to a value of USD x.x trillion by the end of 2020. Telcom companies will form a cornerstone for building a new-age civilization of Smart Cities. The industry plays a pivotal role in rise of IoT and facilitating IP services. Digital services revenue is anticipated to reach USD xxx billion by 2025. This has indeed pushed the telecom industry to gear up and well-manage higher volumes of data. This possible boost is owned by the fact that out if ten Americans, nine use the internet which is characterized by high levels of access to high-speed broadband and smartphone ownership. Telecom industry can’t afford to deny the fact that always-online generation falls under the age of 25, being 32% of the world’s total population.

Acknowledging the skyrocketed growth of disruptive technologies in Telecom Industry, creating awareness among consumers about superfast broadband (defined as 24Mbps+) has become a necessity. As an initiative, Ofcom has come forward and announced to boost consumer awareness. In 2017, Asia-Pacific accounted highest volume of towers in the market. High penetration of smart devices resulted in increased consumption of data in developing nations such India and China. A study predicts that China will dominate the US in gigabit broadband race. China will have more than 50% of gigabytes connections by 2023. Europe will attain second position with more than 15 % whereas North America will have more than 10% share.

The key market players in the telecom industry include Helios Towers Africa, American Tower Corporation, Bharti Infratel Ltd., SBA Communications Corp., China Tower Corporation, AT&T Inc., T-Mobile Towers, Crown Castle International Corporation and GTL Infrastructure Inc., among others. Apart from that, key players are merging and pushing their boundaries forward, one such effort comes from Deutsche Telekom that has announced its new IoT innovation space at IBM’s Watson IoT Center. These will be combined efforts to formulate solutions that will result in Deutsche Telekom’s expertise in the domains of security, connectivity and IoT solutions and IBM’s capabilities in big data, IoT and AI.

The world is steadily moving towards intelligence-based automation. Technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are emerging on an exponential rate and strikes hard in making network more intelligent. For telecom service need of hour is to couple with digital innovation like upcoming fifth generation (5G) which begin the journey towards a ‘zero touch network. Opportunities will ramp up for autonomous vehicle connectivity if 5G implemented with huge amount of authorized data. This will secure future market opportunities like driver safety and easy data processing and management.

these new technologies will also turn bag of challenges related to secure and highly automated network. So far, software defined networking (SDN) is one of the greatest inventions that is capable of transforming network architecture and resolve issues related with digital transformation.