Telecom scenarios for the 4th Generation Wireless Infrastructures

Telecommunication infrastructure deployment, in contrast to the rest of the communication area, is a slow and costly process, demanding a long-range strategic perspective in decision making. Determining key issues for strategic research in this area is thus very important. This paper describes detailed work to that aim, within the PCC project. The aim was to find possible scenarios for the 4th Generation Wireless Infrastructures (4GW) around year 2010 and to determine their implications on the direction of research in wireless communications. In this scenario work, a number of trends were created based on the current state of technology, economy and politics. These trends are verified by using Delphi methods. Based on these trends and additional research, three vivid scenarios are built, which picture different ways the trends may develop, The scenarios are called: "Big Brother Scenario", "Anything-Goes Scenario" and "Pocket Computing Scenario". At the end, the paper discusses the implications of the scenarios on the wireless communication research areas. In particular, the working assumptions and key research problems in each work package in the 4th Generation Wireless Infrastructure project are verified and prioritized according to the scenarios.