Modeling 6G Software Business Ecosystem: A Look Ahead

Abstract

The 6G technology is under development and is expected to be realized by 2030. How to commercialize 6G needs to be considered from a business perspective before technology matures. Understanding the 6G software business ecosystem offers valuable insight into the opportunities and challenges that stakeholders can grasp or overcome. As an open and Software-Defined Network (SDN), 6G business is highly software-intensive, which shifts the previous linear value chains to the future complex value networks. However, existing 6G research mainly focuses on technology standardization and network orchestration, lacking sufficient discussion from the software-intensive business perspective. To address this gap, this study aims to model the 6G software business ecosystem, by adopting methodologies from the Future Studies field, primarily Morphological Analysis (MA). Meanwhile, we follow the five-stage business ecosystem modeling approach as the guideline for decomposing the 6G software business ecosystem into key building blocks. This study identifies four building blocks, namely the 6G vision, stakeholders, their complex relationships, and key opportunities and challenges. Each building block is precisely depicted, moreover, the complex roles and dynamic relationships between stakeholders from software-intensive industries are highlighted.