By Emmanuel Elebeke

WITH 2017 just around the corner, some predictions have emerged   from across the mobile telecommunications space on what are expected to be seen in the New Year.

Connection of new things

In the next year, the internet is expected to connect about 1.5 billion new “things,” and by 2020, more than 20 billion devices will be online.

In theory, every one of the new devices to be connected will be able to connect another. The internet is expected to be more robust to handle the population explosion of data-generating devices.

Cellular carriers will win the bandwidth battle

The carriers’ next-generation “5G” wireless networks are undergoing a build up to meet the challenges of the future. In 2.17, they are expected to support more connected devices at a time, and more importantly 5G networks have lower latency, which is critical in automotive applications (so cars can communicate with each other and with road-side sensors and transmitters). When your device is moving at freeway speeds, high latency communications between two cars can be extremely problematical. The carriers will end up setting standards for the growth of networked devices.

Worst security expected

It is expected that 2017 will witness more internet based attacks as we saw in 2016.

“Internet of things”-based attacks, like the botnet that brought down Twitter and Netflix this year, are going to get more ambitious and more damaging. Attacks on infrastructure like power grids, traffic systems or on IoT consumer devices would be attempted. Although not all of them will succeed, one of them eventually, could succeed. As such, we will see a stricter standard on who has access to what. While personal computers and smartphones get unrestricted access to the internet and the web, there’s no reason that a webcam or a temperature sensor should have the same rights.

The edge of internet will become a huge growth market

In the coming year,  some IoT devices will have the potential to swamp existing networks, as cameras will send a lot of real-time rich data. New jet engines will be loaded with sensors and generate 10 gigabits per second when running. Cars also are now recording massive amounts of information. If there’s one part of the global IoT network that needs rapid upgrade to serve business, it’s the border between IoT devices and the computers on the internet.

Scalability and security

The massive amounts of data being generated by IoT needs to be processed, reduced and analyzed before it hits the internet. It’s a big opportunity.

Low-power wide area networks gain mainstream adoption in 2017

For years, cellular connectivity has been the primary transport for IoT due to its ubiquity, scalability and security. But as the number of services enabled by IoT devices continues to grow exponentially, many IoT applications have arisen that require long range and low-power capabilities. And this is where low-power wide area networks come in. For the past few years, a number of different standards, technologies, operators and infrastructure vendors have emerged.

Government will step in to mandate higher IoT security

High profile distributed denial of service attacks such as those in late October helped to highlight the need for improved levels of security in IoT environments. 2017 will be the year where policy makers and governments will step in to mandate IoT security guidelines across industries.