| NOTAS: | "Developing products, services and vertical applications for the future digitized society in the 6G era requires a multidisciplinary approach and a re-definition of how we create, deliver and consume network resources, data and services for both communications and sensing purposes. This development will change and disrupt the traditional business models and ecosystem roles of digital service providers, as well as open the market for key stakeholders in the 6G era such as digital service operators, cloud operators and resource brokers. Furthermore, sustainable development is a highly complex area, which will call for major changes in the industrialized society in the long run. This white paper discusses unprecedented opportunities of enabling and empowering multiple stakeholders to actively participate in the future 6G ecosystem via novel sustainable open ecosystemic business models with flexible integration of long tail services with tailored performance attributes. This research adopts a qualitative scenario planning method and portrays three scenario themes resulting in a total of 12 scenarios for the futures of the 6G business. We present both optimistic and pessimistic scenarios and assess their probability, plausibility and preferability. By focusing on key trends, their interactions, and irreducible uncertainties, scenario building generates perspectives for the futures within which alternative 6G business strategies were developed and assessed for a traditional incumbent mobile network operator and a novel 6G digital service provider stemming from redefined sustainable economics. Value-capture in the 6G era requires understanding the dynamics of platforms and ecosystems. Results indicate that, to reach some of the preferred futures, we should pay attention to the privacy and security issues related to business and regulation needs; public/governmental, corporate, community and user(s) perspectives and aims of governance; ecosystem configuration related to users, decentralized business models and platforms; user empowerment; and the role of location-specificity of services." |
