The role of ISPs in the connected world now and in the future
Internet service providers (ISPs) have evolved significantly in their role as key enablers of business success, growing alongside the sky-rocketing demand from organizations to take full advantage of the power of the internet.
Despite their relatively humble beginnings, ISPs have grown to become behemoths in the world of technology, on which much of the industry relies to provide their services.
Now, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are both expected to place unprecedented demand on ISPs’ infrastructure. As these new technological advancements gain momentum, ISPs must now continue to adapt and evolve alongside the market.
To look forward, though, it’s important to take a little look back…
Step back in time
The first commercial ISPs emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the rise of dial-up as the first form of internet access that saw widespread uptake among ordinary people. Those households around the world that already had computers were purchasing modems and using software provided by the ISP to dial into the connection via their phone lines.
Although impressive at the time, it was a fairly rudimentary solution with very limited functionality. For example, the household could not use their phone line to make calls while using the internet, which was not very practical.
As such, the expectations placed on the ISP were relatively limited, offering basic connectivity with no firm promises on the speed of your connection or any additional services.
Speeds topped out at 56kb/s so the most strenuous tasks these connections could handle were stripped back to email and file transfer (which itself was fairly limited due to the speed). Downloading any type of media was a painful process, but the limits of the dial-up connection ISPs could do little to improve their customers’ experience.
Security or any advanced functionality was not a massive priority for the ISPs operating in this nascent market, who were mainly catering for enthusiasts excited to get on the web for the first time, but this would soon change.
ISPs’ current role in business connectivity
The arrival of broadband in the 2000s expanded the range of connections to cable and fibre optic, which vastly increased the potential speeds available to end users. This fired the starting gun on expanding what the internet could do for consumers and businesses alike.
High-speed, dedicated business networks meant businesses could take advantage of exponentially faster, more reliable internet that has now become vital for most organizations’ operations.
The emergence of cloud computing, facilitated by this leap forward in connectivity technology, ushered in the era of the as-a-service model, where businesses can make use of infrastructure, platforms, and software through subscription models without having to stump up exorbitant up front costs or pay to maintain them.
This model has proliferated rapidly across sectors and verticals, leaving the majority of businesses reliant on their ability to connect to their cloud providers, as well as the ever-increasing number of other service providers this revolution has created.
As such, the ISPs have entered the realm of critical infrastructure underpinning the operations of many essential services, meaning the reliability of the connection has become the highest priority.
Any disruption in connectivity could impact their productivity, customer service, and bottom line, so businesses expect a fast and reliable internet service with minimal downtime for their day-to-day operations.
Part of this puzzle involves having access to fast and effective customer service when things do go wrong, which means ISPs are often expected to deliver round-the-clock dedicated business support teams with quick response times.
A reliable connection encompasses the security of the devices using it and the data passing through it. Businesses handle various forms of sensitive data and are frequently the target of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.
Accordingly, they expect ISPs to offer a number of robust security features such as firewalls, threat monitoring, spam filtering, DDoS defenses, and intrusion detection features.
Faster, more secure connections for the intelligent era
One area in which businesses are continually placing higher expectations on their ISP is increasing bandwidth as they scale.
As enterprises grow and become more digitally proficient, they will look to adopt the latest and greatest tech for their organizations, and in this era that will almost inevitably place new burdens on their ISP.
AI, for example, has received huge interest from businesses of all sizes looking to implement it in all its forms across their operations, but having a strong connection is often vital, particularly if the business in question is one of the many that won’t have an on-premise solution.
ISPs will be expected to not only provide the low latency, ultra-high bandwidth connectivity to help businesses leverage their AI deployments, but also use AI to improve their service.
This includes using AI to optimize their network management, enhance customer service with LLM-powered chatbots, and provide expanded security capabilities with enhanced threat detection.
In a similar vein, as businesses embrace other technology trends such as IoT, edge computing, and hybrid working models, ISPs will play an increasingly critical role in providing the low latency, ultra-high bandwidth connectivity to support their hyper-connected infrastructure.
To cater to this new demand for performance and scalability, ISPs will need to invest in high-capacity networks that can handle this increased throughput with minimal latency.
As cloud integration becomes an integral part of almost every organization, ISPs will have to work to build out streamlined integrations with all the major cloud providers, as well as cater for increasingly common multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments.
Evolution to support changing demand
To support this, ISPs will need to ensure they have robust data center infrastructure to make sure they can offer reliable and fast cloud services that cater for the large-scale data storage and retrieval tasks their customers require.
Another consequence of businesses accelerating their digital growth for the intelligent era is that it introduces new openings for malicious actors to compromise their IT environments and cause damage by exfiltrating data or simply causing a business shutdown.
This means ISPs will need to prioritize cybersecurity infrastructure including the aforementioned AI-based threat detection but also advanced network security such as zero-trust models, identity and access management, and enhanced network monitoring.
Finally, Regulations like DORA, GDPR, and NIS2 have levied new pressure on businesses to take control of their operational resilience and data protection. This means ISPs must also be aware of and comply with global and local regulations, especially when handling business data. Looking forward
Overall, as the industry continues to be shaped by an era that is more connected than ever before, ISPs have become increasingly crucial pieces of critical national infrastructure. Their responsibility extends far beyond simply connecting users to the internet, but managing this connection and providing an array of additional services businesses need to get the most out of it.
Bandwidth and speed have never been more important as new technologies like cloud computing, IoT, and AI, place unprecedented demands for high data throughput and low latency, while guaranteeing the security and privacy of that traffic is also becoming a growing priority for businesses.
By focusing on the infrastructure considerations laid out above and aligning with the business needs as they evolve to match the new technological landscape, ISPs will continue to be essential business enablers facilitating the digital transformation and underpinning success in an increasingly connected world.
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