A tech camp to predict what the future scenarios of Telecommunications will look like
Foreseeing and trying to “build” future scenarios for the world of Telecommunications: this was the goal of RESTART Tech Camp on Future Visions, hosted last October 2nd at the Department of Management Engineering of Politecnico di Milano and organized in collaboration with the team of RESTART structural project S14 – Net4Future, coordinated by Prof. Ilenia Tinnirello.
The event, focused on the construction of the future scenarios studied under RESTART Grand Challenge #0 – Create a vision of future evolution of telecommunications ecosystem in Italy and internationally, involved the PIs of the 32 projects of the Program, representatives of RESTART partners (including partners selected through Cascade Calls) and all those who felt like actively contributing to the discussion on the topic.
The day began with a presentation of the preliminary work done by Osservatori Digital Innovation team of Politecnico di Milano, focused on identifying possible future scenarios. The program continued with group activities, aimed at defining the main technological trends related to the areas of the 32 RESTART projects, asking heterogeneous groups to answer questions such as:
- What are the next big things in the research area covered by your project?
- How might they impact future scenarios?
- How is RESTART contributing in this direction?
A highly collaborative and proactive feedback, that of the participants in the “Camp” day, during which, almost all the projects present accepted the scenarios identified by Politecnico di Milano team, confirming that the work done so far is proceeding in the right direction.
Different was the feedback on the preferable scenarios, on which there was no real unanimity. Nevertheless, the scenario that would ensure better infrastructure and service development would seem to be able to be traced back to the one that will lead to the greatest technological “disruption.” This means that, in order to “revitalize” the Telecommunications ecosystem, a clear and strong change of course will in fact be needed to try to move in unison in the same direction, aiming for sustainable growth for all.
In this context, the contribution of the 32 RESTART projects will be crucial to the identified scenarios and architecture of the TLC ecosystem. To cite a few examples (not omni-representative):
- AI-networks will be fundamental, changing the way networks are managed and the way we interact with them by bringing AI algorithms to the edge of the network (edge);
- satellite and terrestrial networks will create a single ubiquitous network platform that will enable the development of globally scalable solutions;
- networks will be managed by one or more interoperable and federated orchestration platforms to enable the development of new advanced digital services for users and businesses;