CCA ANNUAL CONVENTION, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND: Nokia Bell Labs executive Theodore Sizer (pictured, right) urged operators to turn their attention to serving physical industries, noting such markets represent up to a $4 trillion opportunity.

In a keynote, the company’s VP of smart optical fabric and device research, said while physical industries make up about 70 per cent of the US economy, they have largely been left out of the communications revolution. Instead, he said digital industries capable of investing in new technology have been the primary beneficiaries, growing productivity around 3 per cent per year compared with 0.7 per cent in the physical segment.

He flagged verticals including manufacturing, mining, agriculture, transportation and logistics as “a great untapped opportunity for us”.

“For scale, the entire worldwide communications industry is $1 trillion. So what I’m talking about is, at the low side, doubling the size [of] our opportunity and, at the high side, quadrupling the size”.

Such businesses don’t need to wait for 5G: while the technology certainly offers added value, Sizer noted there are an “awful lot of things you can do with 3G and 4G” to offer immediate benefits.