Abstract
Climate change, the deterioration of the environment and exceeding Earth’s carrying capacity are major threats in operating environment which require new actions in industrialized and digitalized society. In parallel with the global deployment of 5th generation (5G) mobile communication networks, the telecommunication community has already started to envision 6G networks that target the year 2030. This paper discusses the unprecedented opportunities in the future 6G ecosystem specifically from the business perspective and applies a futures-oriented scenario planning method utilized in two strategy workshops in 2020. The paper portrays four scenario themes and a total of 16 alternative future scenarios for the business of 6G. Through the identification of key trends, their interactions, and related uncertainties, the scenario development process generates alternative futures where 6G business strategies are then developed and assessed through the business model perspective. Scenarios were created under four themes: user experience, business, sustainability, and geopolitics and they are discussed in terms of economical, societal, and environmental perspectives. The findings of the paper highlight the achievement of a preferred sustainable future that calls for attention to the privacy and security aspects considering business and regulatory needs: public/governmental, corporate, community, and human perspectives and aims of governance; ecosystem configuration related to users, decentralized business models, and platforms; user empowerment; and the role of service location-specificity. The findings indicate that it is vital to bring together relevant stakeholders to solve sustainability problems within the ecosystem and pay special attention to open ecosystem-focused value configuration and decentralized poly-nodal power configuration, while responding to the diversified demands of various users across the different verticals.
Highlights
Business models of the digital time have been transforming existing industries with unprecedented speed, and the telecommunications industry follows a similar path
The current 5th generation (5G) market is dominated by incumbent mobile network operators (MNOs), who provide service to the masses with the help of high infrastructure investments and spectrum licenses granted by the regulators with exclusivity nationwide
We will summarize and discuss our findings in two parts, first by looking at what kind of economic, societal, and environmental notions we may draw from the scenarios, and second, how the sustainable 6G businesses might be influenced when applying the business model perspective
Summary
Business models of the digital time have been transforming existing industries with unprecedented speed, and the telecommunications industry follows a similar path. The wireless network technology evolution and revolution will transform multiple sectors through services provided at speeds of hundreds of gigabits per second, support of a wide range of novel applications connecting billions of devices and objects, and versatility by virtualization, enabling innovative business models [1,2]. The delivery of services is changing from MNO centricity to more dynamicity [3]. This stems from the 5G architectural developments where software-defined networking, network function virtualization and network slicing, and cloudification dominate. Related business developments are taking place such as emerging new local 5G micro operator service business models and vertically structured service and application ecosystems [4]
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