Telcos had a massive boost from the COVID pandemic.  I work with many of the world's largest telcos. They all benefitted hugely from instant shift towards virtual work, virtual social life, virtual entertainment and virtual leisure. Huge increase in spending on personal bandwidth, increased use of personal devices. Huge increase in corporate spending on enterprise wide virtual working tools, upgrades of video conferencing equipment, upgrades in bandwidth with increased dependence on video

If we ever realised our total dependence on high bandwidth, it was at the moment that the world plunged into lockdown. Internet access or speed was no longer the issue, rather continuous, uninterrupted high bandwidth to allow high quality video links. However, the telco industry faced fundamental issues before COVID, and these issues remain.

Over 90% of all web traffic is now video in many developed nations - COVID just accelerated a long trend.  It is already the case in the UK that BBC iPlayer, NetFlix and YouTube alone account for more than 60% of the nation’s web traffic. A single 2-hour video is equivalent to a hundred million emails, or days of voice calls. So forget charging for voice or anything else – costs are dwarfed by streaming video. Data on mobiles will increase 1000 fold in the next 5 years, on 50 billion mobile devices connected to 5G, running at 10gps or higher. That means an entire high-definition movie will download in less than 3 seconds.  So telcos will be forced to focus on new kinds of business, for example cloud services for larger companies.

What is the Future of the Global Insurance Industry? 

Insurance is absolutely fundamental to our society and is a $6 trillion industry. It's all about communities of people agreeing to share their own risks along their journeys of life. So how can we improve accessibility and widen sales, especially in emerging markets?

What about the shift from agents to instant mobile quotes? How best to form long-lasting client relationships online.

As one of the world's leading experts on global trends, and author of 17 books on the future, I have worked with many of the world's largest insurance companies, companies like Aviva, Prudential, Munich Re and Swiss Re, advising them on a wide variety of global trends, giving keynotes on the future of Insurance and many other related issues at their most important global events.

One thing is certain:

General insurance will see huge growth globally over the next three decades for a number of reasons, averaging 4% or more per year.

Expect rapid growth in military robots – with tens of thousands of drones owned by the Pentagon alone, raising the prospect of swarms of small, semi-autonomous flying robots being thrown into the air above a major battle zone. “Suicide drones” will soon be available on the open market, able to fly 80 miles an hour, to detonate explosives at any target 40 miles away.

The fashion industry has always been about tribes: what kind of person do you want to be? With whom are you identifying by the way you dress?  Expect hundreds more highly influential 16- or 17-year-olds, each with several million social network followers who read their blogs or tweets or watch their videos, to follow suit. That's regardless of how they buy: online or at a traditional store, beyond COVID.  

The fashion and textiles industries are worth over $1.8 trillion, growing 5% a year, employing 75 million people. At present 50% of global growth in apparel sales is in China, which has overtaken the US as the largest market. But prices globally have been falling in real terms for two decades, and will continue to do so as scale increases.

In the US, the industry employs 4 million people, in 280,000 outlets for clothes and shoes. I met an American cotton manufacturer recently who makes 1,400 pairs of socks every minute. Fashion is worth over $40bn a year to the UK economy, employing over 800,000 people – more than telcos, car manufacturing and publishing combined.