Dealing with uncertainties in building scenarios for the development of mobile services

Abstract

The mobile telecommunications industry needs to develop services for the mobile data market, not only to regain their investments in licenses but also to stay competitive in the future. The current turbulence on markets, politics and technology is generating many uncertainties with regard to, for instance, user needs, dominant technology and the role of different market players. The goal of this paper is to show how to apply the scenario method for coping with these uncertainties in the development of mobile data services. We argue that mobile service providers should pay more and permanent attention to these uncertainties when developing new mobile data services. In 2001 a Dutch consortium (named MOBUS), consisting of representatives of mobile service providers, research institutes, universities, telecommunication suppliers and financial companies, undertook a project with the goal of defining possible new services for the mobile telecommunications industry. To develop a view on the future, a set of four scenarios for the year 2005 was developed. These scenarios were not only made to gain insight into possible new mobile data services but also into how users might use these services and which technologies might be available. An important element of the project was a list of uncertainties produced by the consortium that formed the basis of the scenarios. These uncertainties were evaluated two years later to find out whether these uncertainties are still valid, why they changed and if new uncertainties have come up. Two items were considered to be not uncertain any more, i.e. mobile services will be multimedia based and mobile payment is available. On the other hand 26 new uncertainties were identified. Therefore all market parties involved in mobile data services development should reconsider uncertainties on a regular basis with different teams of experts.