Читать книгу Shaping Future 6G Networks - Группа авторов - Страница 31

First generations of mobile communication networks have mainly targeted the B2C market. Offers targeting the B2B market have been mostly limited to providing connectivity to enterprise employees and providing connectivity to manufactured objects. While the first one has been present since the beginning of mobile communications with resource management offers, the second one has appeared progressively with the rise of Machine‐to‐Machine (M2M) communications, e.g., for logistics and traceability purposes. However, these use cases used to be quite marginal in the mobile network operator business, which remained focused on delivering connectivity and providing communication means to the mass market.

5G has been a first move to complement the B2C model. The B2B market has been identified from the beginning as an important driver for 5G services, especially through ultra‐reliable low latency communications (URLLC) and massive machine type communication (mMTC) features. The deployment models of 5G have also been designed to fit enterprise needs. First, 5G standards enable the provision of end‐to‐end network slices targeting specific enterprise needs, covering both radio access network and core network. Second, some industry players are going further and have deployed their own 5G private networks, fully dedicated to their specific needs.

It is expected that 6G will amplify this trend, and that B2B market needs will be a strong driver towards 6G¹. Our societies indeed rely more and more on digital services and on ambient connectivity. Until now, these digital services have been mainly provided by Internet players (i.e., platforms and content providers), while mobile network operators are providing connectivity to this Internet of services. However, when moving forward in the course of digitalization, social activities and business processes will be progressively transformed. Companies and public organizations will then become key players to implement and benefit from this transformation, and the future 6G requirements should therefore be driven by their pain points and use cases. This also implies a greater involvement of B2B verticals in the 6G standardization process, as outlined in the following chapters of this book.

In the 6G era, innovative mobile network operators will reap benefits from several business models simultaneously: besides selling connectivity services to end‐users, telecommunication operators will provide the required connectivity resources to B2B players (including companies, cities, public authorities, etc.) to fulfill their own missions. Connectivity solutions will need to be flexible enough to adapt to more and more heterogeneous Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, along the lines of what 5G is offering with network slicing. We illustrate this point in the following sections by providing relevant KPIs for the described use cases in the B2B market. 6G should therefore be an opportunity for industry players to invent and design new devices and networking strategies to support their own digital transformation needs of processes and social activities.