Boost for Africa with broadband from the skies

The African continent stands to benefit immensely from the increased rollout of satellite broadband stations in 2020.

So says Mark Joseph, Deloitte’s TMT leader for Africa, reflecting on Deloitte’s technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) predictions 2020 report.

The annual predictions report, now in its 19th year, aims to provide an outlook on key trends in the technology, media and telecoms industry sectors worldwide.

Deloitte Global predicts that by the end of 2020, there will be over 700 satellites in low-earth orbit satellites seeking to offer global broadband Internet. This is up from roughly 200 at the end of 2019.

These new orbiting stations will potentially add more than 16 000 individual satellites to that count over the coming years, according to the report.

For Africa, where vast distances are still a barrier to the rollout of more traditional land-based Internet provision, Joseph believes as these satellites gain traction, the continent’s broadband aspirations will receive a much-need boost.

“These satellites may also play a role in currently well-served areas, offering welcome redundancy in the case of load-shedding, equipment theft and undersea cable outages.”

In 2020, Deloitte expects to see many of the innovations that were previously hyped up become a reality.

“Many services and products that have been ‘just around the corner’ for years are finally turning that corner in 2020,” says Joseph. “Many previously hyped services and products will finally become a reality.”

Turning to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), the professional services firm expects a new generation of edge AI chips will reduce frustrations caused by lack of Internet connection on smartphones by bringing AI to the device.

According to Deloitte, more than 750 million edge AI chips – chips or parts of chips that perform or accelerate machine learning tasks on-device, rather than in a remote data centre – will be sold in 2020, and the edge AI chip market will continue to grow much more quickly than the overall chip market.

The development of 5G network technology and products has been ramping up over the past few years, dominating the mobile predictions. In addition, many of the networking giants have been fighting it out so that their infrastructure gets selected for 5G deployment efforts.

In 2019,market research firm TrendForce predicted that countries like the US, South Korea, Japan and China would be among the first to see the commercialisation of 5G.

Deloitte predicts that more than 100 companies worldwide will begin testing private 5G deployments by the end of this year, collectively investing a few hundred million dollars in labour and equipment.

“For many of the world’s largest businesses, including many in Africa, private 5G will likely become the preferred choice, especially for industrial environments such as manufacturing plants, logistics centres and ports.”

This year, says Deloitte, will also see a boom in the audiobook and podcasting market.

The firm expects the global audiobook market will grow by 25% to $5 billion and the global podcasting market will increase by 30% from 2019 to reach $1.1 billion in 2020, surpassing the $1 billion mark for the first time.

Joseph believes this will also be a marked trend in SA and other countries on the continent, as time-poor consumers seek to squeeze more value out of long commute times and other opportunities to educate and entertain themselves while on the move.

A smarter smartphone: The smartphone multiplier market (hardware, content and services) will drive $459 billion of revenue in 2020 alone and will grow 5% to 10% annually through 2023, lifted by continued robust growth in its largest components. This, says Deloitte, means that in 2023, the smartphone multiplier market is likely to generate revenue of more than a half-trillion dollars per year.

The workhorse of the Internet: Deloitte also predicts the global content delivery network market will reach $14 billion in 2020, up more than 25% from 2019’s estimated $11 billion. The market will double to $30 billion by 2025, a compound annual growth rate of more than 16%.

Biking to work: Tens of billions of additional bicycle trips per year will take place in 2022. The increase in bicycling will double the number of regular bicycle users in many major cities around the world where cycling to work is still uncommon. Deloitte predicts a one percentage point rise in the proportion of people who bike to work during the three years from 2019 to 2022. Between 2020 and 2023, more than 130 million e-bikes are expected to be sold.

Meet your new colleague, a robot: Of the almost one million robots Deloitte expects to be sold for enterprise use in 2020, just over half will be professional service robots, generating more than $16 billion in revenue – 30% more than in 2019.

Can I have an ad with my content? Deloitte predicts global revenue from ad-supported video services will reach an estimated $32 billion in 2020. Asia, including China and India, will lead with $15.5 billion in revenue in 2020, nearly half of the global total. In China, India and throughout the Asia-Pacific region, ad-supported video is the dominant model of delivering streaming video to consumers.