What 2019 holds for networking technologies

It’s been a very exciting year for networking in Asia with numerous major trends gradually reshaping the telecoms and networking worlds – and the next twelve months promise to be equally exciting.My top trend for 2018 has to be the continued digitization of the global economy; from transport, to dining, to even early robotization of the hospitality industry. Additionally, smart cities and 5G have occupied everyone’s attention for months with headlines appearing weekly in the press. Another trend we have seen is the continued investment in state-of-the-art data centers across the region and we’ve witnessed the collaboration of multinational companies in their creation. The growth continues to expand into more markets which means they may be poised for even bigger growth in the future.Lastly, artificial intelligence (AI), while in its infancy, has the potential to revolutionize our world, and we expect to see significant investment and growth in adoption of AI tools by consumers and businesses alike. Pre-5G trials, proofs of concept, and hero experiments have been in the news for over a year. 5G is not intended as an outright replacement of past generations of mobile network technology, but rather to coexist alongside 4G, 3G and even 2G in many locations. The year ahead will see much wider 5G testing in the real-world to provide proof-of-concept of reliable wide-scale deployments. Network operators will adopt intelligent, automated, and adaptive technologies to enable lower costs as they evolve towards larger scale 5G deployments.