A couple of years ago, the Telecommunications Industry Association (News - Alert) (TIA) launched several initiatives to enable Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to fulfill their shared and economic potential. Grant Seiffert (News - Alert), president of the TIA said “The tech and telecom industries are at a critical crossroads when it comes to advancing the development of M2M. IoT and M2M present billions of dollars in economic potential, opportunities to transform industries and hope for improving lives.”

According to the Dell’ (News - Alert)Oro Group, in addition to mobile phones, tablets and laptops, billions of new devices are expected to need network connectivity in the future that we know as the Internet of Things. Technology companies that have access to various forms of unlicensed wireless technology such as WLAN and Bluetooth talk about IoT in the context of driving growth of their particular type of networking technology.

Dell'Oro Group, president and founder, Tam Dell'Oro said "The on-going transformation of the way in which humans and machines communicate with one another will continue to drive operators to improve the quality, capacity, efficiency and performance of both their wireless and wireline networks. While we believe wireless networks will play a vital role going forward, we anticipate the share of wireline investments will grow a percentage of total investments through the forecast period.”

It would appear that the source for market information about the telecommunications, networks and data center information technology (IT) industries, did, indeed have its finger on the pulse of the telecom industry. As stated in a recently published forecast report, the expectation for the overall Service Provider Telecom Equipment market is that it will see substantial growth for the five year period ending in 2019, as compared to the previous five year period.

The trends for the combined Service Provider Telecom Equipment market comprising the Access, Carrier IP Telephony, Microwave, Mobile RAN, Optical, SP Routers, SP Wi-Fi and Wireless Packet Core markets, are set to improve to the tune of $26 billion.

As the Internet of Things and M2M communications continue to grow, evolve and mature, it is obvious that the equipment which will connect everything and everyone will go through some changes. Change is said to be a good thing, and one thing that it will provide in the telecom industry is the need to keep pace with what IoT and M2M can deliver.

This will lead to the production of new equipment in a variety of fields, as those listed above. As more M2M applications are being created, Internet connectivity will become essential to numerous heavy industries on a worldwide level.

The installed base of wireless IoT devices in industrial automation reached 10.3 million in 2014, The number of wireless IoT devices in automation networks is currently forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.2 percent, which means that it will reach 43.5 million by 2020.

There is a wide range of wireless technologies used in industrial automation with different characteristics and use cases and this is only one small section in which we have seen telecommunication equipment needs change and grow. As more devices and people continue to connect over the next couple of years, we can only expect the equipment needs to also continue to grow.