How Could Blockchain Transform 6G towards Open Ecosystemic Business Models?

Abstract

Future 6G scenarios in 2030 envision society that will be data-driven, enabled by near-instant and unlimited wireless connectivity to intelligence. This calls for a multidisciplinary approach and a re-imagining of how we create, deliver and consume network resources, data and services. This development will change the traditional business models and ecosystem roles, as well as open the market for new stakeholders like micro-operators, edge cloud operators and resource brokers. This paper discusses unprecedented challenges of enabling and stimulating multiple stakeholders to have a more active participation in the future 6G ecosystem and gives a brief outline of key implications of blockchain technologies for related business model transformations. The research extends the existing archetypes of closed and supply focused mobile broadband business models and proposes the novel open ecosystem-focused scenario in which value configuration is leveraging distributed ledger technologies. This expands the architecture from centralized innovation and transaction platforms towards decentralization without a focal resource-orchestrating entity. Results showed that blockchain enabled 6G business can be built on novel business opportunities, value generation and competitive advantage that have positive strategic consequences on scalability, replicability and sustainability.

Privacy-Preserving Techniques for IoT Data in 6G Networks with Blockchain Integration: A Review

“…[13]. By leveraging blockchain's capabilities, 5G and 6G networks can benefit from tracing, certification, and supervision functionalities [14]. These features enable the verification and tracking of data and transactions, ensuring the integrity of information exchanged within the network.…”

A survey on the use of blockchain for future 6G: Technical aspects, use cases, challenges and research directions

“…Yrjölä et al [31] An overview on the prospective use of blockchain to create an open business model comprising of multiple stakeholders in 6G ecosystem.…”

“…In future 6G networks, many security challenges may encounter due to extremely large network of heterogeneous networks, and the expected extremely higher reliability requirements. In order to thwart more sophisticated adversaries, advanced and intelligent security mechanisms will be needed [31], [131], [132]. Authors in [136] proposes a blockchain-based approach for intra-domain and inter-domain DDoS mitigation.…”

“…9. Blockchainized 6G for Industry 5.0 Applications networks to enable numerous trending applications such as industry 5.0 enabled factories, holographic teleportation, extended reality, and connected autonomous vehicles [31], [95], [225]. Furthermore, [226] evaluates blockchain and IoT use cases and presents that blockchain and smart contracts align well together with the microprocesses related to value creating resource configuration that is capable of being realized through modern microservice technologies.…”

Sustainability as a Challenge and Driver for Novel Ecosystemic 6G Business Scenarios

“…6G vision papers considering future communication needs, enabling technologies, the role of AI, and emerging use cases and applications have recently appeared [5,[25][26][27]. Furthermore, discussion has recently expanded to 6G indicators of value and performance [28], the role of regulation and spectrum sharing [29], the antecedents of multi-sided transactional platforms [30], antecedents of the 6G ecosystem [31], and the exploratory scenarios of 6G business [32].…”