Socio-economic conditions will dictate future update of mobile services, finds report
A new report by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, produced at the request of the Commission's Information Society DG, has concluded that future socio-economic conditions will be the main factor determining growth in the uptake of mobile communication technologies. The study was carried out as part of preparations for the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) world radio conference in 2007, which will consider the future demands of wireless services on the radio spectrum. It sought to explore the way citizens will use such services over mobile networks, and assess the traffic that will be generated by 2010, 2015 and 2020. This was achieved through a series of workshops, dialogue with EU funded research projects and a web-based questionnaire. Three potential economic scenarios for that period were constructed to assess their impact on user needs and motivations. These were: 'smooth development', where EU economies provide growth and development across all 25 Member States; 'economic stagnation', in which the EU economy declines and economic growth falls behind that of Asia; and 'constant change', where the economy follows a broadly positive trend but with constant ups and downs. For each scenario, users were separated into private consumers and enterprise customers, with the former being further categorised according to age and income, and the later according to sector and company size. It was assumed for all categories that users in 2020 will be more comfortable with advanced wireless services having grown up with the technology. According to the report, 'Logically, the most important driver for growth in the use of wireless technologies in all scenarios was the general economic development and financial conditions.' Under the smooth scenario, the need arose for sophisticated services such as education support, whereas under the stagnation scenario, low-cost services aimed at more basic lifestyles were prevalent. An important use for wireless communications identified under the constant change scenario was enabling migrant workers to maintain family ties and to organise their lives in their adopted countries. While no single dominant wireless application emerged from the study, in all three scenarios simple voice-based applications were seen as important, especially in the event of economic stagnation. Estimates of the total data traffic in each scenario revealed that between 2010 and 2015, the differences between each are relatively small. It is only after 2015 that big differences in traffic volumes become apparent, and the decline in consumption may be more severe than expected in the case of economic stagnation, says the report. 'The scenarios indicate that in a stagnating economy, the industry will tend to seek a protectionist stance from government and will hold on to existing services longer, not having the will or the funds to move to new and apparently riskier offerings,' it adds. The authors conclude with a warning that their results be interpreted with care, since they are based on many assumptions and approximations. 'Moreover, the temptation to consider the calculations as predictions of the future is to be resisted,' they say.