Thursday, April 2, 2015

Telemedicine: The next big thing to drive bandwidth requirements?

Recently there is plenty of noise in the Internet of things, or everything (IoE), connected home, smart nation, or smart cities and smart everyhing ;). During my conversations with service providers in the region, one of the biggest question is how could the SP monetize this new wave. For example, if the money is to be spent on infrastucture or m2m, the SP part is very little. i.e. they would end up providing the SIM cards. If its connected homes, then again SP got little to play. So the question always goes back to enterprise / B2B applications.

One of the most talked, and interest raising domain is healthcare. Given the diversity in Asia, this is believed to make a huge change in the coming future. Almost all major service providers in the region are evaluating Healthcare and how they can be part of the value chain. I saw Telstra made first announcement in this category by acquiring Anywhere Healthcare. I like the way Telstra been transformed from a lethargic incumbent to aggressive player.

Another country with huge potential is Indonesia. The country or the nation of multiple islands is geographically so diverse, and with horrible connectivity. Telemedicine can make a huge difference in the lives of people. Probably my guess is Telstra would focus on australia first then on Indonesia. I can see it happening with telstra global with its cloud offerings, and the same will happen with other services.