Description
Date depot: 1 janvier 1900
Titre: WILL THE TELCO SURVIVE TO AN EVER CHANGING WORLD ? TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS LEADING TO DISRUPTIVE SCENARIOS
Directeur de thèse:
Djamal ZEGHLACHE (Wireless Networks and Multimedia Services)
Domaine scientifique: Sciences et technologies de l'information et de la communication
Thématique CNRS : Non defini
Resumé:
INTRODUCTION
The telecom sector is going through a challenging phase because of a deep transformation in technologies (mainly driven by the development of the Internet) that have a huge impact on the telecom industry as a whole and, as a consequence, on future deployment of new networks, platforms, and services. These new technologies and new solutions can be differently shaped according to peculiar views and paradigms and models proposed by Actors competing in the communication industry. A lot of this innovation is promoted and introduced under the pressure and the actions of prominent actors aiming at conquering new share in the Internet market. This approach is particularly fierce in the mobile sector. Here, the rapid innovation in mobile platforms (e.g., new operating systems such as iOS or Android) has led, on one side, to the explosion of the mobile internet nurtured by the boom of so called “smartphones”, and, on the other side, to the creation of closed environments fully controlled (at the client and at the server level) by a single company. As a consequence, the (mobile) Internet is highly fragmented and users are usually trapped into walled gardens.
But mobile Internet is just a case, in fact the whole Internet is going through several major transformations. For instance some of the disruptions are determined by the intertwining of technological issues that different disciplines are analyzing and solving. This yields to solutions that are produced by different industries and can be adopted in different context. The major example is the case of NBIC (nano, bio, information and cognitive)technologies.
There is the need to identify when these transformations will accelerate due to the maturation of technological and industry factors. When this happens, the industry is heavily impacted and hence transformed. This rapid changes occur in what the thesis defines Inflection Points. A first goal is to identify a set of potential and future inflection points made possible by the evolution of technologies. The evolution of the Internet has a particularly strong impact on Telecomm Operators (Telcos). In fact, the telecommunication industry is at the verge of substantial changes due to many factors: e.g., the progressive commoditization of connectivity, the increasing importance of software based solutions and the flexibility it introduces (compared to the static system of Telcos), the dominance in the service realm of Web Companies, and others.
The thesis is not centered on a socio-political discussion but elaborates, proposes and compares possible inflection points in evolutionary contexts in such a way to determine and consolidate possible scenarios based on solutions and approaches that are technologically viable (that follow a plausible technological trajectory).
The identified scenarios cover a broad range of possibilities:
1)traditional Telco, this is the evolutionary path: the Telcos will maintain essentially their role in connectivity and related services (even if in a consolidated market -i.e., a market that is not growing, but essentially maintaining the same perimeter);
2) Telco as a Bit Carrier, this scenario is made possible by the progressive decrease of value of the connectivity and related services. Connectivity is a commodity and the Telco will build networks able to convey large amount of data at the minimal infrastructural costs. The Telco will just forward data from edge to edge with the simplest possible network;
3) Telco as a platform provider, the Operators will be able to accommodate for the needs of customers by putting together different classes of resources such as: connectivity, processing, storage and sensing/actuation. The Telco will be able to create a networked platform able to offer resources and control/management functions that customers will be using in order to create overlay solutions on top of this infrastructure. This scenario can be seen as a logical evolution of the introduction in the Telco Networks of the XaaS, where X stands for {N= network, P = platform, I = infrastructure}. Services will be mainly provided by third parties;
4) Telco as a Service Provider, this is an optimistic scenario that consider the Operators able to position themselves as successful Service Providers. In this scenario, the networked platform is used by the Telco to provide directly to customers appealing services. These services are communication services, as well as new classes of services made possible by technological evolution (e.g., Internet of Things);
5)Disappearing Telco, this scenario is the most disruptive with respect to the current situation. It will depict how the evolution of some technologies could potentially bring to the fact that connectivity will be completely commoditized and becoming a ' right' of the citizen. In this scenario services will be freely created at the edge of networks and networks of networks will be created between end poi
Doctorant.e: Minerva Roberto