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• Supply-chain impacts on devices, network • New forms of social network and entertainment
elements, and underlying components. This is will likely emerge, if people are forced to
already being strongly felt by many vendors. stay, work and learn at home. There will be a
In the longer term, we can expect companies big focus on childcare, eldercare, eSports and
to focus more on alternative sources of supply, gaming, entertainment streaming, home delivery
“just in case” rather than “just in time” logistics services, healthcare and so on. Some of this
and inventory management, and various other is already being seen in China, with virtual
shifts in business practice. gym classes and other innovations becoming
popular. As a historical note, the large Chinese
• Possible slowdown in global standards and online commerce firm JD.com was first set up in
regulatory meetings / agreements (for instance 2003-4, when its founder closed his brick-and-
3GPP Rel16/17). While this will likely be mortar retail stores during the SARS outbreak.
countered with improved remote-attendance, that
may be unsuitable for replicating the informal In summary – both with the current COVID-19 and
discussions needed to reach effective outcomes. any future pandemics, networks and telecoms will form
a core part of the direct medical response and crisis
• There may be staffing issues in the hardest-hit management. But perhaps more importantly, it will
regions, impacting operations, deployment and enable humanity to adapt to challenges and difficulties
maintenance for networks, data centres etc. in entirely new ways, by improving the ability to work
and live wherever required. However, the telecom
• There may be less government tolerance of industry needs to work through the lessons carefully,
encryption & anonymity, if it is shown to understand bottlenecks and pinch-points (both physical
thwart efforts to trace infected patients and their and virtual) and be prepared to evolve rapidly. Regulators
contacts. and policymakers also have extra roles to play.

• All pre-2020 market forecasts should be
considered unreliable, given their input Originally published by: ECI: https://blog.ecitele.com
assumptions of “business as usual”.

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