The Future Of Communication Is Already Here Posted on : Dec 23 - 2017

All the hype in technology these days is around ML, AI/deep learning, self-driving cars, blockchain, AR/VR and other shiny new things. However, there is one area of technology that has been silently evolving and gaining momentum recently: communications. Comms no longer simply consists of things like PSTN, SIP or conference software and hardware. Its rise over time has been fueled by things like smartphones, social apps, productivity/collaboration apps, gaming and, more broadly, millennials. Even the big four tech giants -- Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon -- have caught up to this and are spearheading some keys efforts in the field of communications. In this article, I'll specifically talk about an area of comms that has been gaining momentum: WebRTC.

Let's look at some of the things that have contributed to it and those that can fuel further momentum in the near future.

The Demise Of Plug-In-Based Communications

Adobe Flash was synonymous with video plug-in for over a decade. It enabled things like collaborative and interactive audio/video streaming and screen share, and these have been gaining momentum over the last few years.

However, Steve Jobs' famous "Thoughts on Flash" article became a turning point in the demise of Flash. HTML 5 was eventually widely adopted, which led to WebRTC replacing Flash as a better free plug-in alternative. An initiative by Google, WebRTC has been implemented in most popular browsers (Chrome, FF, Opera and Safari), resulting in direct browser-to-browser communication in real time without the need for any plug-ins.

In fact, WebRTC can be used to connect any mobile/tablet/browser to any other endpoint, with the underlying WebRTC engine taking care of network inconsistencies. As of today, WebRTC has almost completely replaced Flash for real-time communications, and several sectors have taken advantage of the technology.

Machine Learning And AI

Video communication is expensive, and even though bandwidth has gotten cheaper in recent times, the demand for it has increased manifold. However, companies are pursuing interesting optimizations using ML in image processing, and it could be just a matter of time before it is applied to real-time communication. View More