Techno-Economic Assessment in Comms: New Challenges

What is it about?

This article shows a brief history of Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA) in Communications, a proposed redefinition of TEA as well as the new challenges derived from a dynamic context with cloud-native virtualized networks, the Helium Network & alike blockchain-based decentralized networks, the new network as a platform (NaaP) paradigm, carbon pricing, network sharing, and web3, metaverse and blockchain technologies.

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Photo by John Adams on Unsplash

Photo by John Adams on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA) will allow to address, in optimal conditions, the transformation of a more than $100 billion global market of managed network services by 2030 at 6% CAGR from 2021 [1], considering different flavors for SD-WAN, SASE or SSE adoption. And this is only an example of one domain in communications. We can extend it to any other domain as, for example, 5G infrastructure and services market with a $1 trillion investment forecast by operators from 2019 to 2025 as stated by GSMA [2] The dynamic context in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with the surge of cloud-native virtualized networks, the Helium Network & alike blockchain-based decentralized networks, the new network as a platform (NaaP) paradigm, carbon pricing, network sharing, as well as web3, metaverse, blockchain and lately Generative AI technologies, poses new challenges for Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA) that need to be addressed to choose always the optimal solution. Thus, current TEA models must be improved to integrate and manage all this increasing complexity. Additionally, some TEA models for Comms can also be extended to other domains and industries, such as energy, chemical, biotechnology and bioengineering optimal process design, which are key to sustainability issues to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The challenges the European Union (and worldwide) must face towards a net-zero Europe by 2050 include reducing emissions 55 percent by 2030 [19]. This goal requires reducing emissions mainly in power, transportation, buildings, industry and agriculture by investing about €28 trillion in clean technologies and techniques over the next 30 years [19]. The huge order of magnitude of the aggregate investments required for this energy transition and the variety of possible architectural and technology pathways to reach the net-zero goal, make it necessary to apply agile and effective techno-economic assessment models as well in these domains and industries. Besides, worldwide publicly funded economic recovery instruments, such as the $1.5+ trillion in the U.S. (Build Back Better) or the €1.8+ trillion in the EU (Next Generation EU and Multiannual Financial Framework), require tremendous effort by public servants to prepare, publish and assess request for proposals (RFP). As RFP preparation and assessment are still very handcrafted, there is also an urgent need to systematize, automate and industrialize it by incorporating agile TEA tools to minimize current bottlenecks.

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