ComSoc Technology News (CTN) is a free, online monthly publication that publishes interesting, timely, and newsworthy articles that span a wide range of topics related to the communications technology industry. Our mission is to be an informational resource that brings diverse perspective and thought leadership, while providing a platform for lively discussion amongst our readers.
CTN is run by a team of volunteer editorial board members who are technical experts in diverse fields. All articles are reviewed and edited by a technical editor. The editor-in-chief performs the final review prior to publication.
January 2024 Issue #2
Looking Back to Our Predictions and Looking Ahead to the Future
Over the last couple of years, we have used the January edition of CTN to look ahead and try to predict the technologies or trends that would garner attention or perhaps become mainstream. In 2022 we talked about AI becoming mainstream, well we missed that prediction by a year but who is keeping tabs? In 2023 we ventured into the world of the magic 8 ball to see if the famous fortune teller toy was able to help us with our predictions. I am happy to say that the fortune teller did quite well: of the six predictions we posted in January of 2023, we can argue that all of them hit the target in one way or another. Integrated Communications and Sense (ISAC) became a much talked about subject and it is now making its way into the wireless standards arena with AI becoming a strong partner of ISAC. The sky was very friendly to us as NTN continued its strong mind share gain including 5G native satellite testing taking place, 2024 will continue to see its growth. IoT “disappeared” as predicted, since it has started to weave itself into the fabric of everyday life. Just see what transpired at CES this year, this disappearance act is likely to have a bigger follow up in the upcoming years. Red-cap device 3GPP standardization was finalized in 2023 and vendors are announcing chipsets and modules to support devices and solutions based on Red-cap, it is gaining important momentum to support many 5G verticals. We predicted that fiber to the home will continue to see major gains in 2023. This is certainly the case in many geographies, and it is an indispensable technology for many high-end services. We also predicted that in 2023 RIS in many of its incarnations (Intelligent Reflective Surfaces, Smart Repeaters, Large Intelligent Surfaces, etc.), would see a broader industrial engagement with more defined use cases and solutions proposed, aimed at future commercialization of the RIS technology. This is indeed the case, research on RIS continues and 6G study groups and forums have selected RIS as one of its core technologies. Finally, we watched WRC-23 take place and happily see many commonsense agreements, it is clear that the industrial and economic success of wireless based technologies will hinge on spectrum availability more so perhaps than any other technological challenge.
For this year’s January article, we will shy away from predictions and will cede the stage to an article from the Hexa X and Hexa X II project titled “Hexa-X laying the foundation for 6G and Hexa-X-II paving the road to 6G systemization”. It is in some respects a predictive article as it dives into the world of 6G, its vision and the enablers that will shape it. We want to thank the authors for this timely contribution to CTN.
CTN Editorial Board
Past CTN Issues
January 2024 Issue #1
Is Open RAN a Smart Choice for Smart Cities?
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