Driving development: the impact of ICT investments on the digital economy

The strong linkages that exist between ICT investments and the digital economy are well established at this point. However, with a new wave of digitisation – which includes artificial intelligence, cybersecurity solutions, IoT and cloud computing – a reassessment of the importance of ICT investments to the global digital economy is now necessary.

In this joint study with Economist Impact and Huawei, we look at the role of infrastructure today and analyse the key challenges and opportunities ahead. Key strategic issues include disentangling which digital technologies are going to be most in demand; the network transformations required by telecoms providers; and the extent to which operators can capitalise on the new wave of growth and business opportunities that are appearing in the market, from new mass-market consumer applications (e.g. metaverse and XR) to new enterprise services (e.g. advanced connectivity, cloud and storage, analytics and management applications).