The next twenty
And if you think the last 20 years were a wild ride, the next two decades will bring even more changes and disruptions to telecoms as we know it, thanks in no small part to the accelerated pace of technological change and the growing power of consumers and enterprises to harness technology and apps and shape them in ways service providers can't anticipate - and do it faster.
At the same time, there are forces that can throw off innovation timetables, from economic crises and political upheavals to policy initiatives designed to force ISPs to police the web in the name of censorship or copyright protection. I wouldn't go so far as to say telecoms service growth hinges on reasonable DRM policies, but there's ample evidence that innovation doesn't flourish in restrictive environments - and there's additional evidence that certain regulators are determined to restrict them anyway.
All of which is why it's difficult to imagine what telecoms will look like when Telecom Asia reaches its 40th birthday.
The only safe bet at this stage is that you won't be reading that anniversary issue on dead trees unless you order it via a cloud-based print-on-demand service. Otherwise, you'll read it on your glasses/contact lens display and flip through the articles and videos with voice or thought commands like normal people. It's also likely that your glasses/lenses (which only you can use thanks to the retina-scan biometrics) will be connected to your wearable motion-charged body-area network that uses ambient LED lighting for a backhaul link to your home femtocell.
Provided there's a bankable business model, I mean. To steal/rewrite a line from author William Gibson: the future is here, it's just not billable yet.