To think that everything revolves around us, that we are the problem and the solution to everything… these are very human things. However, from time to time we take a bath of reality when we know certain data and not precisely about things unknown to us. The Internet, the network of networks that we use every day to surf, connect with other people, work, watch movies or play online, is not only ours. In fact, “up to 40% of Internet traffic is not human” as explained by José María Álvarez-Pallete , president of Telefónica. This opens up a new era that needs a rule change and many other adjustments before it’s too late.
José María Álvarez-Pallete, president of Telefónica, has intervened during the first day of the Mobile World Congress 2021. In a decaffeinated edition with no news that the organizers have insisted on carrying out (they will know the reasons), Pallete has spoken in the organized session by GSMA entitled “Our Connected World”. Here we have highlighted an aspect of the potential and opportunities that the digital transformation that we are experiencing gives us.
Human traffic vs robot traffic
At the beginning of his speech, Pallete spoke about what has changed with the global pandemic due to the Covid-19 coronavirus. This is something that we always emphasize and is that it seems that society has advanced several years at a stroke in relation to the adoption of technology. At the beginning of 2020 it was unthinkable to teach online classes, meet in bulk on Zoom or have your grandmother make a video call. These are fairly common examples, but there are tons of others.
However, the most striking fact of the intervention came when he pronounced the phrase: “Up to 40% of Internet traffic is not human , but is generated by machines that talk to each other.” This will produce a large amount of data that can be used to be converted into information. This is where big data, the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence come into play.
For all this, Álvarez-Pallete took the opportunity to demand a new regulatory framework. Edge Computing, the cloud, cybersecurity, IoT and Big Data are technologies that present a great opportunity for society, but they also need laws that allow them to be applied safely. Therefore, it has explained that:
“This is an extraordinary opportunity that we cannot miss, but it is also a great challenge. Governments have to attract investment in the smart digital infrastructure that will make all of this possible. “
To which he has added that:
“We have to react to seize the opportunity. To achieve this, Europe needs a sustainable telecommunications sector, otherwise we will fall further behind in the global race for digital leadership. We call for a new regulatory framework and competition rules to build a strong digital Europe ”.
The latter is a historic claim by Telefónica and other large telecommunications operators that, despite the good intentions of the European Commission, do not end up seeing policies applied to achieve an equal fight with the Asian and American giants.