Telstra talks tech trends for the coming year

As we move into 2021, which is this week being overshadowed by the biggest tech show on the planet, Telstra is looking forward to what the year has to offer, and what tech we’ll use in 2021.

Overall in Australia, access to the internet is improving. Over 11 million Australian households and businesses can now access the NBN, and you can get 5G access on a good range of smartphones. So what will we be using and how will we be using it?

With these faster speeds, Andrew Scott, Head of Technology at Telstra expects customers to begin taking advantage of new Wifi technology being announced to improve WiFi signals around the home.

Modern routers announced over the past year – and this year at CES – now include support for Wifi 6. WiFi 6 brings a range of benefits, it’s faster, more power efficient and including neat standards like WiFi Easy Mesh. WiFi Easy Mesh is an industry standard for all those mesh routers that launched in the last few years. Access Points that support the Easy Mesh standard can be added to the same network, expanding coverage without having to worry which manufacturer you use, letting you build your own mish-mash mesh.

Getting better signal around your home and on the go is vital for what Telstra sees as another growing trend in 2021 – Gaming. Gaming got a boost late last year with the launch of next-Gen consoles from both Sony and Microsoft, with Microsoft also launching a trial of their Project xCloud online gaming service last year if you want to game on the go.

Using xCloud on Tesltra 5G is pretty awesome – try xCloud yourself, you can sign up for free – but Telstra is going to be launching a new 5G tech this year with 5G mmWave.

Currently Telstra mainly uses what’s called ‘sub-6Ghz’ for their 5G network, which can share signal to a fairly wide geographical area, but doesn’t have massive downlink. 5G mmWave offers the opposite, it can provide class leading downlink speeds, but is limited to smaller geographical areas. In 2021 we’re going to see 5G mmWave expand from trials into active use.

As we’ve seen already, COVID has followed us into 2021. Telstra expects to see technology emerge to help us social distance as we return to the office, and public spaces.

Telstra also expects to see Augmented Reality begin to emerge with Heads Up Displays (HUDs) starting to be added to vehicles and wearables including your normal eyewear like glasses and sunnies, for industrial and sporting use.

Finally, ARM laptops are looking to make a name for themselves. We saw initial forays into ARM laptops last year, but with Apple announcing new ARM powered Macbooks last year, and vendors announcing more Windows based ARM laptops at CES year, this year could be the year that ARM starts taking over the laptop.

We’re only a couple of weeks into 2021 but with CES going on right now there’s a lot of new tech emerging. It’s interesting to see Telstra’s take, but make sure you keep up with our coverage to see what tech you will use in 2021.