A new Deloitte report, Predictions 2007, outlines the top 10 trends each in technology, media and telecommunications expected to influence the global market this year.

Technology predictions that can specifically impact the media relations space include:

• The rising cost of free technology – Deloitte sees the possibility that consumers and enterprise customers will increasingly be willing to pay for services like email- in return for such value-added benefits as advanced Spam filtering, virus protection and quarantine functions, delivery guarantees and end-end encryption ; for instant messaging in return for protection from Spim, the IM version of Spam; and for VoIP (voice over Internet) in return for higher quality and fidelity, and protection from Spit – yes, the voice version of spam.

• Heeding the hidden costs of storage – With consumers increasingly losing such important data as photos, movies, music and other files, and business forced to foot high bills for digitizing data previously held on paper, Deloitte sees growth in backup, recovery and insurance services.

Media predictions include:

• Making digital, user-generated content useful – While Deloitte sees the possibility of user-generated content producing revenues to be limited, it feels “the established media sector could grow its top line by using user-generated content channels to raise awareness of existing, forthcoming and archive material, grow market share, engender loyalty and, indeed, identify new talent..”

• Paper, pixels and profits – The report declares that “publishers and other media companies should create a balance between paper and pixels (online)….It may take many years, or even decades, for the Internet to match the accessibility of paper.” Indeed, Deloitte notes, “printing may be the best way of monetizing previously digital-only content.”

And, perhaps most strikingly, in the Telecommunications sector:

• Deloitte warns the world may be Reaching the limits of cyberspace, as the Internet approaches its total capacity this year. The causes are an increase in the Internet user population to well over 1 billion people, coupled with the rapid rise of video usage – with an estimated one-third of all Internet traffic in 2007 expected to be mostly illegal, peer-to-peer video. Solutions, according to Deloitte, include upgrades of fiber backbone and increases in the costs of bandwidth, wholesale transmission, and ISP tariffs.

Complete PDF reports on each sector, including executive summaries and detailed synopses of all 30 total trends are available for free through the Predictions 2007 web page.