In 2024, Ericsson published a brief paper that positioned 6G as a platform technology in a digital context. This is an important distinction as Ericsson and others seek to reposition of networks away from mobile broadband connectivity and closer to being enablers of the digital economy. In this context, a platform is a product that enables third parties to build products or services on top of it. The 6G platform aims to expand the scope of networks beyond communications services by enabling third parties.
ASP AND CSP Challenges
According to Ericsson, there are two key types of organization in the current mobile communications landscape. These are communications service providers (CSPs) and application service providers (ASPs).
CSPs deliver a best-effort mobile broadband (MBB) data connection via a business model that focuses on consumer subscriptions and applications relying on generic MBB.ASPs focus on private or enterprise customers. The ASP business model relies on CSPs’ MBB bit-pipe offering, which limits the ability of ASPs to innovate.
Overcoming Challenges
Ericsson’s view on overcoming these challenges is for CSPs to offer differentiable add-on services both directly to ASPs as well as through aggregator and application platforms. These add-on services would be in addition to the MBB bit-pipe services they offer to enterprise and private consumers.
The diagram below from Ericsson’s ‘Charting the Future of 6G Platform Opportunities’ paper illustrates key platform components and relationships with industry participants.
The 6G platform incorporates service relationships with new stakeholders (applications and application platforms, in light yellow). These add to existing relationships with network aggregator platforms as well as enterprise and private consumers). To prevent fragmentation, there needs to be a developer friendly global interface coupled with attractive business agreements.
Key Dependencies
Success in positioning 6G as a platform depends on several factors.
- One is to recognize that the role of networks can exist at many levels in the solution space. At its most basic, for example, a network offers communications and other services to a customer. When global coordination is required, an ASP should be able to access a single interface, regardless of the location of users for a given application. Now, the platform plays the role of an aggregator. Networks can also be related to other mobile and information communications technology platforms such as operating systems, application distribution, cloud compute, and content delivery networks.
- Monetization and business support are another key success factor. An important objective for 6G is to act as a bridge between strongly growing digital economy services and connectivity-centric telecommunications services. APIs are the means of exposing 6G platform capabilities to application developers. One consequence is that the existing range of APIs on 5G networks will need to expand and support customized APIs more easily and rapidly.
- A third factor concerns services offered with performance and reliability commitments. These will require better mechanisms to assure fulfillment, both for the initial service setup and during the lifespan of the service. In this regard, the ability to observe relevant key performance indicators and contextual information that describe intent will be important, both for performance monitoring and for re-configuring network resources to address variations in demand.
SOURCE: Ericsson: Charting the Future of Innovation, July 2024