The telecommunications industry is devising elaborate plans to overhaul everything from business models to operations to customer experience. A key innovation that could transform telcos, find senior partner Tomás Lajous and colleagues, is edge computing, a much faster way of handling data that involves moving processing to the “edge” of a network rather than a distant data center, as is the case now. A McKinsey survey of 75 telco executives found broad interest in edge computing use cases, led by its applications for video monitoring, assessing illnesses, and augmented reality.
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A segmented bar graph shows telco executives’ interest in pursuing different edge computing use cases. Respondents answered yes, no, or insufficient insight as to their interest in each use case. Those cases with the largest yes percentages appear from left to right: video monitoring at 84%, monitoring and treating illness at 81%, augmented reality at 74%, robots for task automation at 67%, logistics routing and 3-D mapping at 63%, autonomous vehicles at 61%, drones for surveillance and monitoring at 58%, operations management in oil and gas at 55%, and operations management in mining at 52%.
Source: 2022 McKinsey survey of telco executives across North America and Western Europe (n = 75).
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To read the article, see “Tech talent in transition: Seven technology trends reshaping telcos,” October 13, 2023.