Carrying the Communications industry forward

Watch as Adriano Poloni, Accenture’s Tech Lead for Communications & Media, discusses our joint report with TM Forum: Blockchain: Where’s the value for telecoms?

Accenture’s latest research for our Technology Vision 2019, our annual checkpoint on the technology priorities which businesses should start planning for now, offers the first trend as “DARQ power”. This research and our work with the leading CSPs across the globe mean that we firmly believe that distributed ledger technology, artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR) and quantum computing will be the next set of new technologies to spark a step change in allowing the reimagination of entire industries.

Blockchain technology allows multiple stakeholders to confidently and securely access identical copies of distributed data. There is no need to run a costly and slow inter-organization data reconciliation process.

CSPs’ revenue growth opportunity lies in combining their strengths in connectivity and trust with blockchain’s advantages in security, trust and speed. A few promising use cases include:

1. Digital identity management: Using blockchain, end users can control access to their personal information, with CSPs acting as trusted authorities for the user’s identity, collecting and releasing biometric and other user data as desired.
2. IoT disintermediation: Leveraging their existing involvement in the IoT ecosystem, CSPs can deliver a value-added trust capability through digital identity validations and assuring the integrity of device transactions.
3. Management of cross-carrier payments: Using blockchain technology, CSPs can facilitate rapid, secure, variable-sized payments among the members of their aggregated user base of 5 billion.