Presentations from the UK Spectrum Policy Forum Plenary meeting held on Thursday 25 January 2018.

1. Our Digital Future
Professor William Webb
2018
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2. Can we predict the future?
2Copyright : Webb Search 2017
In 2001, Google received a patent for its
PageRank mechanism
In 2001 a mere 100,000 homes get high-
speed access via ADSLWritten in 2000

3. In 2020 we will…
• Book flights with our personal communicator
• Communicator will work out when to wake us up based on diary
• Have home automation such as coffee machine that pre-heats automatically
• Have a home security system that can automatically lock doors
• Have a personalised news feed to our communicators
• Have robots that cut the grass
• Have excellent speech recognition
• Check in at airports using the phone
• Link communicator to seat-back display on aircraft
• Pre-order coffee at nearest Starbucks ready for collection on arrival, provide
directions to get there
• Measure biometrics with sensors integrated into clothing
• Provide recommendations to nearby restaurants and automatically book
• Have average data rates to the home of 60Mbits/s
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4. Fact often follows fiction
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Here now Possible Impossible
Location tracking VR to replay memories Invisibility
Memory assistance Robots and micro-bots Teleporting
Real-time translation 3D replicators Flying cars for all
Gesture recognition AI computer interfaces Holographics

5. “640k should be enough for anyone”
• Plenty of under-predictions, but mostly from 50+ years ago
• More recently we tend to over-predict
• Conventional wisdom says we over-predict the next 2 years and under-predict
the next 10 but plenty over-predict the next 10 as well, often on the back of
corporate hype
• “Laws” are good guides but eventually fade
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6. Key enablers
Existing Future
Internet: Will continue to be there in
its current form
IoT: Will deliver productivity gains and
better working devices
Connectivity: Has mostly reached the
point of delivering all we need
AI: Will be very powerful in specific
problem areas but weak in general
problem areas
VR and AR: VR will remain niche but
AR might play a larger role
Big data: Valuable in delivering new
insights but hard to gather and use
Robotics: Currently widely used in
manufacturing
Robotics: Could automate a lot more
but still a long way off mass usage
Autonomous vehicles: Will evolve
slowly
Quantum computing: Difficult to
predict, but may not have much impact
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7. Different environments
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8. Societal push-back?
• We live in an apparent utopia
• But ¼ of teenagers have mental
health issues, >10% of children are
obese, inequality is growing in many
countries, protest votes abound,
zero-hours contracts are the new
norm and many fear for their jobs
• Digital is blamed for much of this,
often rightly so, although it will not
result in large-scale unemployment,
otherwise we would already be
seeing it
• Despite this, we are addicted to our
phones, Governments love investing
in AI, IoT and digital, and its global
nature means any push-back only
slows things down
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9. The forecast
• Individuals will see an ever-better virtual assistant functionality as AI matures
• Home automation will not improve much, a few more smart devices will appear
• The office will see widespread deployment of IoT, biometrics and robotics,
mostly as a way to save costs on administrative and maintenance staff
• Some sectors will make widespread use of IoT to improve productivity such as
agriculture and manufacturing
• Transport will not change materially but we will be better connected and see a
gradual growth in driverless vehicles (cars, trains, buses, etc)
• Leisure will expand, with each interest area gaining apps, on-line communities,
additional functionality and monitoring from IoT devices
• New forms of entertainment based on AI and AR/VR may emerge but will not
take up a significant amount of our leisure time
• Society may become ever-more concerned about the changes wrought by
digital, and there may be some push-back, slowing change
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10. Impact on the behemoths
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0 200 400 600 800 1000
Apple
Google…
Microsoft
Amazon
Facebook
Berkshire…
Exxon Mobil
Johnson &…
JPMorgan
Tencent
US$ (Bns)
World's top 10 companies by value
Gentle decline as hardware replacement cycles extend
Dominance continues with investment in AI and robotics
Dominance continues with role in cloud, AI and more
May struggle as niche competitors and regulation bites

11. Impact on the others
• A few more Ubers, but the low-hanging fruit has been picked
• Connectivity providers (MNOs and telcos) become utilities
• Suppliers to the telco industry suffer as volumes fall and global competition
forces down prices
• Internet companies such as router providers and cloud services companies
tend to utility-like businesses
• IoT generates vast numbers of small-medium specialists but few large players
• AI companies get sucked into the behemoths
• Apps, OTT and content providers continue to thrive
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12. In summary
• We got what we were prepared to pay for – and that doesn’t change
• There are beguiling visions of the future, and some are technically possible, but
like smart homes many just are not attractive enough for us to pay for them
• We have achieved more than science fiction, we need time to adapt society to it
• The world will be a better place but not a particularly different one
12Copyright : Webb Search 2017