COMSOC 2020
0. Executive Summary
1. Introduction
2. Association scenario in 2020
2.1 Role of Associations and balance between on line and physical presence
2.2 Social Networks: an aggregation tool or a substitute for association?
2.3 Association relation with the industry
2.4 Association relation with policy makers and governments
2.5 Associations as cluster of freelance
3. Powerful drivers changing the world
3.1 Energy Crises
3.2 Climate Change Crises
3.3 Food crises
3.4 Aging Society crises
3.5 New economies gaining the upper hand
3.6 New emerging world area
4. Telecommunications in 2020
4.1 Technologies entering the arena
4.2 Viral Networks
4.3 The Data Tsunami and the Software Networks
4.4 The Terminals steerage
4.5 Embedded communications
4.6 What does it mean to be a telecommunication expert?
4.7 Telecommunications Players
5. COMSOC Mission in 2020
5.1 Punch line
5.2 COMSOC Constituency at 2020
5.3 Segmentation of potential markets and interest
5.4 How is research going to be structured?
5.5 How is industry going to innovate, follow, catch up?
5.6 The labor market and the need for continuous education
6. COMSOC “products and services” in 2020
6.1 Conferences
6.2 Knowledge base – papers, newsletters, abstract, intelligence reports, …
6.3 Lobbying services
6.4 Tutorial, courses, certification
6.5 On site education
6.6 Membership Certification
6.7 COMSOC University for Professional Engineers
6.8 COMSOC University of Communications Economics
6.9 COMSOC MVNO
7. COMSOC Roadmap in this decade (SWOT analyses) and call for Actions
Appendixes
a) current COMSOC membership and last ten years evolution
b) current Telecommunications Scenario
c) list of committee members
d) list of organizations that have been involved in preparing and challenging this document
0.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This part will be written after the revision of the content expected at Opcom in September.
 COMSOC is not ready today to serve as an independent trusted reference point on
technology and its implication, although it gathers a multitude of contributions,
through papers and conferences. There is a need for a structured approach to
technology implication. 
 COMSOC should insert in its goals the provisioning of a neutral, peer reviewed yearly
document on technology evolution and its implications and have a Director
responsible for this goal and for positioning COMSOC as the ICT reference on
technology in the Society. 
 COMSOC should participate as an independent organization to the Science, Technology
and Society Forum, bringing any year an updated view on technology and its
application.
 COMSOC can and should become the organization policy maker will turn to, to
understand technology evolution and its implication.
Associations will take up a crucial role in supporting the education marketing and insurance
of freelance. COMSOC should move quickly into this area and become the association
supporting this new generation of professionals.
1.
INTRODUCTION
Evolution in the COMSOC framework, since year 2000, has been amazing:
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new countries entering and taking the lead in telecommunications
new forms of spontaneous associations made possible by communications networks
explosion of wireless communications surpassing fixed line communications
explosion of timely available crowd-reviewed information
new players in the communications arena
It may be impossible to foresee precisely the evolution in the coming next ten years but the
consensus is that the changes COMSOC may be facing will be greater than the ones
experienced in the last decade.
These changes are both a potential challenge and an opportunity to the growth of COMSOC
and to its membership.
Under Byeong G. Lee’s presidency a group was formed to look at a 2020 COMSOC scenario
and to identify roadmaps and actions to be carried out in the coming years.
This document is the result of that group. The ideas presented have been discussed in a
number of places and challenged by different constituencies, including academia, industry,
COMSOC Sister Societies, and reflects the common understanding of the group of the
comments and critiques that have been voiced.
The document, however, is not intended to represent a unanimous consent nor to become a
consolidated reference for the coming years’ actions; it is not a “specification” but rather a
starting point that the group offers to the COMSOC leadership with the suggestion to keep it a
living document to be periodically, every two years, updated to reflect the evolution of the
overall environment and of the strategic directions pursued.
COMSOC will keep evolving, in response to the bottom up demand from its constituency and
of the changing overall scenario. This will be a linear evolution and it will happen without
requiring any long term perspective. It will be mostly a tactical evolution.
Hence, the main objective of the group, reflected in this document, has been to think outside
of the box, outlining a disruptive strategic evolution to go beyond today’s view and to answer
the question:
What can and should a leading telecommunications association be like in 2020?
and
What are the actions that have to be taken to ensure that COMSOC will be leading in 2020?
The strategic and tactical views have to coexist and the COMSOC leadership has to face this
challenge by instantiating the actions proposed in this document into concrete day by day
operation.
This document is structured into six main parts plus four annexes.
Following this introduction we provide a possible scenario on what technical associations will
be like in 2020, what their role can be and how their role will be executed in terms of physical
presence vs virtual, on line presence. This includes a discussion on the role of Social Networks
and how much they can be directed or to what extent they will represent a continuously
shifting dynamical aggregation of people reflecting changing interests with no specific fidelity
to a specific network. Will Social Networks gravitate onto “topics” or onto “tools”? The issue is
important since it shifts the focus from being a leader in “topics” to being a leader in
“aggregation”.
This part is also proposing some reflections on the relations that may exist in 2020 among
groups, associations and industry, to what extent will industry find a value in the existence of
associations, how industry will seek participation in association and may desire to be actively
involved in them.
The relation among groups, associations and policy makers is also addressed, and the
influence that associations can have on policy makers and therefore the service they can
provide to industry and to the public by creating a neutral playing field for worldwide policy
discussion. This aspect is important since it helps in defining the boundaries of an association:
shall it have only technical boundaries or shall it embed economics, social, cultural aspects?
The association members are also discussed. Will they be mostly individual professionals
(freelance) or will they be employees, and in this case of what type of
industry/academia/institution, or companies? Will these members be associated with several
associations at a time and what can be the relation among those associations? Will we see a
federation of associations, each one active in a different field?
The third chapter takes a look at those drivers that are changing the world in terms of
potential, focus, concerns, opportunities. These drivers are likely to condition the perception
of values and therefore will focus the interest of individuals, communities and policy makers.
For sure, telecommunications and technologies in general are going to play a major role in
defining the approach and responding to these drivers.
We are considering in this report:
- the energy crises, where telecommunications is playing both the role of the villain and
the one of the savior. On the one hand telecommunications (and IT) is going to increase
its hunger for energy moving from less than 2% in 2010 to a 3.5% in 2020 (electricity
wise the growth would be from about 8% to over 15%)
- the climate crises, with an intensification of focus on controlling the human generated
causes to climate change; again sensors and greater efficiency in production and
distribution are crucial along with the telecommunications infrastructure supporting
them;
- the food crises, resulting from growing population, a shrinking of crop fields, and a
better lifestyle; sensors and sensors networks as well as efficiency in production and
distribution will play a crucial role;
- the aging society crises, having impact both in the increasing cost of health care in
many countries and in a shift of demographics, is likely to impact the demand on
telecommunications and the type of services making use of telecommunications
infrastructures;
- the rise of new economic areas overtaking the present leading ones, shifting the
potential demography of COMSOC members and the focus and priorities of our Society;
- the emergence of new geographical areas as major telecommunications users, like
Africa, resulting in a different relevance of technologies and bringing to the potential
COMSOC audience a different type of interest.
The fourth chapter focuses on the characteristics of telecommunications in 2020 since these
have an impact on COMSOC both in terms of the areas to be addressed, in terms of its
potential constituency, and in terms of its relation/competition with other associations. More
specifically the following broad areas are considered:
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technologies entering the arena of telecommunications. Specifically we are addressing
the expected evolution of bioengineering, nanotechnology, smart materials, smart
buildings, smart cities and more generally awareness of objects and environments
since they can become both components of telecommunications infrastructures and
new users of telecommunications infrastructure. More than that, they are creating a
new audience for COMSOC and conversely other associations focusing on those
technologies may attract our constituency to their orbit;
the emergence of viral networks as an integral part of the telecommunications
infrastructures brings to the fore a different constituency of players that COMSOC is
not considering today, like civil engineers, private citizens and this can significantly
expand the potential audience but at the same time may require a different way of
relation with them;
the Data Tsunami has just started; by the end of the decade the data tsunami will have
changed completely the scenario of telecommunications with more devices creating,
storing, interacting with and analyzing data. Data communications will be both local,
ambient wise and network wise and that is bringing into the potential COMSOC arena
new players and may be leveraged for new services. The difference between computer
and telecommunications network will disappear and consideration shall be given to
the existence of two different societies, like the Computer Society and the COMSOC
society. This may also affect other IEEE Societies. Also, the encapsulation of data into
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services and the commoditization of physical networks will push towards software
networks with new disciplines and new actors to consider;
terminals are going to take the upper hand, both in terms of market value (they already
have), in terms of innovation (they already have) and in terms of being themselves an
integral part of the network first and then a network themselves that may slowly
replace (a significant part of) the network. This leads to the entrance into the COMSOC
market area of a completely new audience that today is followed by other associations.
This may be the single most disruptive issues we will be facing at the end of this
decade;
embedded communications will provide broad interaction capabilities to many, if not
most, objects changing the perception of telecommunications. This on the one hand
will devalue the glamour of telecommunications (it will disappear from most people’s
perception) but on the other hand will increase tremendously the number of industries
that have to have an understanding of telecommunications and telecommunications
technologies. In turns, this increases the market span for COMSOC although that
increased market speaks a different language and it is focusing on different issues. It is
going to be similar to the shift we saw in the 1950/60ies when telecom switch
operators were replaced by lay persons with the introduction of the DDD. Many more
people became telecom operators but they were completely different from the
previous ones.
what will it mean, hence, to be a telecommunications expert in the next decade? What
will be the kind of knowledge a telecom engineer will require and who will consider
herself a telecom engineers. What subjects will Universities be offering? As
telecommunications change who should COMSOC consider to be a telecommunications
engineer?
what kind of evolution in the players in telecommunications might be expected over
this decade? Are we going to see a concentration with fewer, bigger, players or a
fragmentation? Are telecommunications employees going to increase of decrease?
The fifth chapter opens the part of the document that goes to the core of the repositioning of
COMSOC. This chapter aims at describing COMSOC in the third decade of this century by
defining:
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the COMSOC Mission in 2020. As telecommunications have shifted from being a
technological enabler for the economy and the social fabric to a pervasive component
in any economic and social domain COMSOC is repositioning itself attracting a much
wider constituency and providing a unifying glue to the many facets of the
communications world;
the “Punch line” capturing in a nutshell with less than five words the essence of
COMSOC
the COMSOC Constituency at 2020 in terms of gender, scholarship, belonging to what
market sector (industry and sub sector, academia and department, institutions,
freelance) , wealth and propensity to aggregation
the Segmentation of potential markets and interest, defining the various market
segments that will be addressed detailing for each one what value perception is
characterizing it
the evolution of the way to pursue innovation, how is research going to be structured
and its partition among academia and industry, what will be the role of single
individuals, how is the flow of information likely to happen and be managed, how
much research will be patent protected and how much will be Open Innovations;
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the role played by established industry, how is industry going to innovate, follow, catch
up and what type of skill industry is seeking, and how much this skill will be sought
internally and how much on the open market;
the structure of the labor market and the need for continuous education of
professionals in the broader area of telecommunications as identified in the previous
chapter.
The sixth chapter describes the kind of products and services that COMSOC has to provide to
fulfill the mission defined in the previous chapter (chapter 5). This description is given in
broad terms and it is not to be seen as an exhaustive list, rather as a set of beacons to indicate
directions of evolution.
Specifically, the chapter addresses the following areas:
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1
Conferences: there will be conferences held in specific locations, as it is today but these
will be flanked by conferences based on Social Networks, possibly developed by
COMSOC themselves as an extension to today’s blogs and meeting areas. As video will
become the main communications paradigm among humans, social networks will
become video based as well. Additionally, conferences may become much more
focused on a specific theme, micro-conferences that will be able to attract a qualified
and quantitative worthwhile audience because of the delocalization of the event (in
principle all sessions of today may become a conference of tomorrow). These microconferences may also be organized in a blink of an eye and COMSOC will be providing
the required tools to make this possible preserving the quality of the discussion;
Knowledge base: COMSOC will be a repository of knowledge in its area of operation.
Whilst data and information will continue to be more and more accessible for free,
COMSOC will deliver certified information by leveraging the power of its members’
crowd sourcing. Standards will become an integral part of COMSOC as they will be
more and more operationally based. Papers will remain a significant part of the overall
knowledge and authors will be getting a direct revenue when their intellectual
property is being used through COMSOC. Access to information will be made possible
through services that on the one hand incapsulates the information and on the other
hand will monitor its usage and tailor it to the specific user in a Web3.0 paradigm. This
will be possible because COMSOC will create a semantic data base of all information
that is uploaded to it. This semantic data base will be mined through ad hoc services
creating intelligent, customized reports. This evolution will put COMSOC both on a
collision path with Intelligence Agencies and on a partnership liaison with many of
them.
Lobbying services: the broad coverage extending from technology to services to
economics and policy will make COMSOC an ideal partner to provide lobbying
services1 since its neutrality is guaranteed by the information aggregation process and
by the meta information creation;
Tutorials, courses and certifications will be more and more tailored to specific needs
and the brand “COMSOC certified” will become a pre-requisite in many public RFP with
industry following;
On site education will be common, since the delocalization of learning will be
widespread and COMSOC will embed learning tools in its interface, supporting a wide
variety of needs. Tools will be able to customize the education offering to specific
Consideration shall be given to the compatibility with IEEE legal status
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needs of individuals and industry. DLTs and DSPs will be more interesting from the
point of engaging an audience rather than to “pass on” information.
Membership qualification for each interested member will evolve, based on an IEEE
certified process from the present “Senior” and “Fellow” to “Specialist in…”.
COMSOC University of Professional Engineers will provide the fabric to engineers to
become “Professors” as well as to attend selected courses, as broad or as narrow as
desired. Curricula can be created and constantly redesigned. A professional getting a
COMSOC degree will be highly valued by the market since that degree will expire every
year and its renewal may require recertification in specific subjects. This is of
paramount importance given the ever shortening useful lifetime of knowledge as state
of the art. The presence of a comprehensive semantic engine, knowledge data base and
thousands of certified Specialists can ensure the availability of constantly up to date
education that only a worldwide organization can provide.
COMSOC University of Communications Economics will bridge the gap between
technology and its leverage and will piggy back on the services provided by the
COMSOC University of Professional Engineers2.
COMSOC MVNO provides the virtual communications infrastructure required to its
members to access all services and information independently of the time and location.
Partnership with many local and worldwide Operators will provide the access for free
to COMSOC services and a discounted access for any other services.
The final part of the document, chapter 7, describes a roadmap pulling together the various
information presented in the previous chapters and outlining milestones that the COMSOC
leadership has to focus on in this decade. They are sufficiently broad to provide direction
without enforcing today actions that will have to take into account unforeseen evolutions and
tactical steps. Additionally, it provides a SWOT analyses of each milestone.
Annexes to the document present:
a) current COMSOC membership and last ten years of evolution
b) current Telecommunications Scenario
c) list of committee members
d) list of organizations that have been involved in preparing and challenging this document
In the document the following conventions have been used:
❏ Denotes a forecast
Denotes a Macro Change requiring consideration and possible repositioning of
COMSOC
 Denotes an action that COMSOC shall be considering to respond to a change in its
domain.
2.
ASSOCIATION SCENARIO in 2020
The widespread use of the communication fabric and the variety of tools supporting the
congregation of people in communities is likely to change the leverage of today’s associations.
This is a concept that may be implemented in different ways, including a partnership with
existing universities making the COMSOC know-how available for their education courses.
2
This part identifies current trends and envisions the role of formal associations by 2020.
The first years of this decade are characterized by the rise of Social Networks spanning
from generic (clustering of people) to specific (clustering around a topic). The former
tends to remain relatively stable, the latter has a fleeting life span, depending on the
relevance of the topic.
COMSOC today is embedding these two facets of clustering, on the one hand it is an
association of people with a relative stability (31% of our members are members since 2000),
on the other hand it is clustering around specific technical topics. However, because of the
nature of these topics and their breath, also this clustering is relatively stable with TCs having
a quite long life span (all TCs present in year 2000 are still here today and there are 5 new
ones).
 COMSOC needs to develop mechanisms of clustering around hot topics in a fast
dynamic way and be as quick in closing the topic once it is no longer a hot one.
The dynamics of interest is likely to increase in the future as on the one hand the life span of
usable knowledge decreases and people will tend to have shorter employment, more related
to projects than to companies. Today we have little information available, although
potentially we can harvest many data. As an example we do not track who is attending which
session at a conference and there is no follow up based on the interest shown.
 COMSOC needs to capture the shifting interest at the individual level. This requires
tools to seamlessly update a database of interest that can be mines to finely tune offers
to the individual and to the community.
The dynamic nature of interests leads to the clustering of quite different communities. Whilst
there is this kind of clustering at the Conference organization level (where several IEEE
Societies may team up in the organization of specific conferences and sessions) this is usually
not true for TCs and in some cases it leads to competition resulting in a splitting of
participation and decreasing the value of the networking factor.
Technology is ever more applicable across various domains. Hence, the same
technology becomes of interest to several, disjointed constituencies.
Several technologies, although different in nature and evolving independently of one
another in terms of research teams and processes, are affecting each other and may
require a holistic view. Hence the need for multi-disciplinary clustering.
Technical competence will entail more and more a multi-disciplinary view. We are
moving from a world of limited performances to one of abundance. This requires the
skill to choose among various technologies and to leverage from their right mixing.
❏ By 2020 we can expect that significant cross fertilization has taken place across
various technologies; paradigms that fostered the evolution of a technology are being
applied to foster the evolution of a different technology. Different constituencies may
need to work together to further progress evolution.
❏ The Moore’s law as it is today based on silicon is likely to slow down in the next
decade; this will force scientists working in electronics and telecommunications to find
alternative paradigms, today used in different fields, such as the ones applied in
genomics or in massive-parallel viral systems.
 COMSOC needs to increase its “technology span” but this can only be done in close
cooperation with other associations and groups and requires a reconsideration of
COMSOC boundaries, possibly the merging with other association or, more likely, the
establishment of strong, although case specific links, with other associations.
 It is suggested to share and debate this document and its periodic revisions with other
associations, possibly within a special session in some of our flagship conferences in a
roundtable, specifically involving the
- Computer Society
- XXXXXX
 As it will become clear in this document, the need to focus and differentiate cannot be
achieved by limiting the technical horizons and fields of applications.
 Technology has to remain at the core of COMSOC but it has to be flanked by cultural,
economical and social aspects.
2.1 Role of Associations3 and balance between on line and physical presence
As in the past, Associations by 2020 will have the role of:
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multiplying the value of the individual by creating a critical mass that can have a stronger
effect on the “external world”
ease networking among the members
decrease the cost of access to resources thanks to economy of scale
create a sense of belonging
The emergence of the on line world is not changing “per se” the role of associations but it is
- challenging the way this role can be played
- changing the value of the above roles in a prospective member view with implication on
the association revenue model, and also
- changing the way to implement the role.
2.1.1 Critical Mass
On line tools are becoming more and more effective in attracting individuals to any given
issue. The on line tools have the advantage over off line methods to support a viral spreading
of the information and to provide the means for an immediate response.
The cost of spreading the information, and the interactivity associated to the message
“we want this, if you want it too click and become one of us”,
provide an immense advantage over off line tools.
Recruitment is clearly just one part of the establishment of an association in terms of critical
mass. The association should be able to maintain the members and count on their continuous
presence. As it is easy to join, so it is easy to disappear. Hence, an association that cannot
substantiate the actual membership at any given time loses its credibility.
Off line association can suffer from the same problem and usually membership is counted on
some hard factors, such as how many paid the membership dues at a certain moment in time.
3
For broader consideration on where societies of societies think professional association structure and
management may be trending look at The Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives (CESSE) and
the American Society of Association Executives (ASEE).
This can easily be replicated on line but the problem is that as associations drift to the on line
world they may find it difficult to have a paying membership. The dues have to be justified
and they are needed for the credibility of the declared constituency.
The approach of counting the membership in terms of number of members actually
interacting with the association services (as it is done in Social Networks) may lead to
significant underestimate of the actual membership in association like COMSOC.
Out of the 50,218 members as of December 2010, a minor portion has interacted on line with
COMSOC publications, blogs, events.
Pure on line associations requires nevertheless some concrete ways of determining the
commitment of its membership and its identity.
 COMSOC will need to impose a membership fee even as it moves to an on line only
community. This has to be seen in the context of a possible new IEEE paradigm to
include a Society membership as part of the IEEE membership dues.
 Some graphic representations4 of the levels of interactions within COMSOC members,
including interactions with information may be desirable. Some interesting fall out on
semantics can provide value to our constituency.
On line presence is important in 2011 and it is going to be a given in 2020.
 COMSOC needs to prepare to become an on line Association, that can deliver also some
real world services. These flanks the mainstream on line services.
 The BoG and Officers meetings progressively shall be moved on line (at least one of
them per year). The tools supporting on line meetings should support open
participation of a wider constituency, with the possibility of holding private sessions
when appropriate. Beyond 2020 we can expect to have all BoG and Officers meetings
taking place on line. Travel and physical meetings shall be reserved to external
interactions when being “face to face” is considered a token of consideration.
2.1.2 Networking
By 2020 practically all networking will take place on line. This does not imply the end of
“gatherings”, like conferences and workshop, but the “gathering” will no longer be the way to
network.
The HiTech will provide plenty of opportunities to network with the same face-to-face
effectiveness. However, the HiTouch will still create the sensation of value. Hence, as an
example, there is no expectation of decrease in Conference attendance “in person” but there is
an expectation of significant growth in Conference attendance “on line”.
Since most networking will take place on line it is essential to find ways to monetize the
networking support.
❏ By 2020 networking will be a common feature of all information. Most “Information”
will be network hubs, attracting, monitoring and managing its use, even when the
information is copied and used elsewhere.
❏ By 2020 most information is accessed through a network. In the past data was received
by a person and a computer was used to compute that data and derive an information.
Today the information is received through a computer that preprocess the data.
Tomorrow the information will be contextualized through a network.
Graphic analyses of data as provided by the Senseable Cities Lab of the MIT may be applied
to COMSOC data.
4
 COMSOC needs to become “the network” delivering the information. In order to do that
it has to be aware of each individual member history, interest, motivation, skill. This
will be the main reason for choosing “the” COMSOC networks versus other networks.
 COMSOC needs to move into the Web 3.0 space, steadily building the specific
understanding of its (individual) membership. This will result in higher value
perception by its (individual) constituency, increased stickiness, and also will deliver
increased value to third parties needing to identify information targets.
Chapters may play an even bigger role in the next decade. As Networking based on High Tech
takes the upper hand, Chapters can provide the High Touch. Moreover, networking at Chapter
level is likely to be very focused, in line with the Web 3.0 paradigm of contextualization of
information.
2.1.3 Economy of scale
Transaction cost by 2020 will have reached very low values in all the Information spectrum
(access, analyses, generation, transfer). Hence, it is likely that Associations will be unable to
leverage on this factor to attract and maintain membership.
However, the networking aspect, aforementioned, is likely to increase the cognitive cost in
dealing with information. In other words, as information grows and it gets easier and easier to
access it, it gets more and more difficult to filter it, increasing the cognitive cost.
There are, and more will be available by 2020, tools to decrease the cognitive cost of dealing
with information leveraging on the cognitive investment of other people.
 COMSOC should develop, directly or through partnership, cognitive supporting tools
and integrate these into its membership offer.
OPEN ISSUE: Should COMSOC be involved in other areas beyond information, like human
resource management (labor bank)? This issue stems from the fact that human resources will
be progressively valued as information agents and since COMSOC can provide certification to
these agents it can also act as a labor bank.
2.1.4 Being part of selected few
It is part of human nature to be appreciated and to show that one is “special”. Some
Associations create attractiveness because they accept only a few specifically qualified
members.
There are two conditions for this mechanism to work:
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the association has to be recognized as attractive and choosy at the same time,
admitting only a subset of applicants, and
it should be visible to the prospective audience who its members are.
Taken for granted the attractiveness, the selectivity is in contradiction with the need to have a
large constituency, particularly if revenues are dependent on a critical mass of membership.
On line associations can benefit from an almost infinite grading of their membership and this
can be made visible and can make members proud. There are of course many metrics that can
be used to rank members.
 COMSOC should leverage on the on line easiness to rank membership to exploit it to
the benefit of the members and of COMSOC. The present grading, member, senior
member and fellow, can be articulated much more and can be segmented. COMSOC can
apply criteria similar to the ones used in the grading of papers to the fair grading of
members. In turns, the grading can be exploited by the member as a form of
certification. This ties in with the increasing mobility of workers (in particular fostered
by delocalization and remote working), the continuous professional education, the
need to harvest experience by constituencies that are far away from
telecommunications and Information Technology in general.
2.2 Social Networks: an aggregation tool or a substitute for association?
There are today many Social Networks, some clustering many participants, some creating
strong interactions among participants, some acting like generators of communities.
Facebook is a case in point. It has reached 700 million participants, has billions of interactions
daily, supports an easy construction of communities related to specific topics.
Additionally, it has created an open framework to let third parties develop applications
(services).
Therefore Facebook is both an aggregation tool and a gigantic cluster of communities sparsely
connected (a friend of mine, being part of my community can also belong to a different
community being friend of someone else who is NOT a friend of mine).
The average community in Facebook has about 130 participants. COMSOC, in this sense is on a
completely different scale (potentially).
Interpersonal communications, however, is (statistically and psychologically) constrained by
the Dunbar number (somewhere between 120 and 230). So it cannot be imagined that
COMSOC membership can have personal relationships significantly different from the one
seen on Facebook. At the same time, COMSOC can rely on information based relationship.
Facebook is basically a tool supporting relationship since it lacks the sense of belonging
(people are not proud to be part of Facebook, they are part of a community supported by
Facebook).
❏ In 2020 there will be plenty of Communities, as there are today, whose participants
will be able to interact more effectively one another thanks to Social Community tools,
but these will not be Association per se’.
 COMSOC will have to adopt Social Network Tools to facilitate its members’ interaction
but should not use these tools as a surrogate for being an Association. The focus must
be on the latter, with the former being a partial enabler for some of the Association
activities.
 Tools are important and should not be underestimated by COMSOC, since the facility of
interaction can well lead to the formation of alternative communities outside of the
COMSOC space.
 COMSOC should have Social Networking tools integrated in its participation processes.
Setting up tools, independently of them is completely useless, as it is seen today by the
injection of tools that are seldom used and just by a minority of members.
2.2.1 Personal Based Relationship
There are, and there will be, several tools to enhance personal based relationship helping
individuals to be in contact through the web with one another. Self profiling and the
possibility to search profiles will be common.
 COMSOC5 should make use of existing tools with minimal customization. The profile of
its members can be automatically updated, based on opt in, and support search. Each
member owns her data and should have full control on it. At the same time COMSOC
should provide certified information, whose disclosure is controlled by the member
(e.g. on COMSOC issued certification, papers accepted, conferences attended, volunteer
activities…)
2.2.2 Information Based Relationship
Certified technical information (in a broad sense, including also application of technology)
remains at the core of COMSOC value. This information can be used to create relationships
among interested parties.
The Social Network based on information may consist of people having different roles, simple
users needing to be updated as information changes, or to be retrained, guardians of the
information who have the responsibility of keep it updated and certified along with
mechanisms controlling the disclosure and utilization, contributors enhancing the
information over time as well as its relationship with other information…
 COMSOC will need to become the recognized authority for a number of technical
information and will need to establish relations with other entities that are in charge of
different sets of information related to the ones certified by COMSOC.
Technical areas will continue to generate specialization and twigging. It is obvious that
individual members will tend to focus more and more but the value of an association lays in
creating an environment where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Twigging,
therefore, shall not result in splitting but this can only be ensured through an association that
provides an added value in keeping all “twigs” attached to a single tree.
 COMSOC shall ensure that each of its members can understand the implications of all
the areas that are being addressed within COMSOC. This provides value to the
individual since through COMSOC he will always be able to understand the global
picture; at the same time he has the possibility of bringing issues from his own specific
domain to the level where they can reach a large constituency. The semantics aspect is
crucial in this information bridging. 
2.2.3 Gathering Based Relationship
Conferences and events with people physically meeting will remain a source of value and
revenue to many associations. The form in which these events will be run will evolve as more
virtual meeting technology is made available.
Chapters will play a major role in this evolution and COMSOC can be the unifying fabric for
this evolution to take place.
Gatherings are creating “de facto” Social Networks spanning the life of the event. As more
technology is supporting virtual gatherings this can extend the participation adding virtual to
physical. Moreover, the gathering can be prolonged beyond the event dates continuing to live
in the web space.
The Data Base and most web tools are today owned, maintained and created by IEEE. It is
not expected that the situation may change in 10 years time. Even though COMSOC may only
have limited control on them new approaches like “mash up” may support a strong
characterization of COMSOC presence on the Web.
5
 COMSOC shall be a leader in the fading boundaries of physical and virtual gathering.
 Chapters are going to play a major role in distributed gatherings, mediated by COMSOC
infrastructure
2.3 Association relation with the industry
By 2020 it can be expected that industries in the ICT domain will be comprising a small set of
big global companies (both in manufacturing and operation) and a very large set of medium
small industries especially in the area of access operation and service creation/provisioning.
The present players will have merged or gone out of biz.
The ICT industry scenario will show a few big global players and a multitude of small
players. Of these some will be local, dominating the access area, others will be global,
mostly in the service area.
The I & C in ICT will be progressively merged6 also as result of the “Cloud” paradigm
that blurs the boundary across communications and information.
Many industrial sectors will use telecommunications embedded in their products. In
part the skill will be present in house, particularly in medium big companies, in part
will be sough outside by acquiring off the shelf building blocks.
A larger consulting industry sector for ICT will be booming.
The hiring of present young generation will bring into the industry, both large and
small, a new approach to cooperative working, a greater interest for Open Software
and Open Innovation, a more intense spirit of looking outside of the enterprise
boundary to search for applicable research result.
 The spirit of Open Innovation and collaborative working can be a strong opportunity to
COMSOC to act as an intermediary for knowledge and innovation.
Big industries are likely to coordinate actions to propose de facto standards and accelerate
time to market. Small industries, particularly those in the service area, are likely to create self
sufficient services not requiring any particular standard beyond pure transportation.
Big associations, like today’s GSMA, TMF (may be running under different names and
pursuing different topics) are likely to exist but they will serve the needs of industry, not of
professional engineers.
A growing part of industry will have decreased the amount of in-house research (with the
exception of big manufacturers and a few big players in the software area) and will depend on
open innovation, mostly provided by universities.
Micro innovation will be the asset of small enterprises, both in hardware and software areas.
In Europe several companies will still participate in cooperative research projects, more and
more tied to field experimentation. The EIT KIC initiatives should be starting to deliver
concrete results and may change the way research is being done in Europe by mixing together
Education, Research and Business. Additionally a successful EIT would increase the
relationship between institutions and industry.
The August 2011 acquisition of Motorola by Google and the decision of HP to exit from the
PC market to move to the Cloud are points in case.
6
There is more proximity among Education, Research, Business and Institutions.
Communications infrastructures, like GEANT in Europe, are spanning the whole
spectrum rather than focusing on just one segment as in the previous decade.
 COMSOC should benefit from this trend by leveraging its mixed constituency.
2.3.1 Academia vs Industry
University research will likely continue to be funded with present mechanisms, although in
some areas there may be a growing funding by industry (like happens today in the USA).
The general decreased involvement of industry in research will make industry more
attentive to academia and will create closer ties with it.
The decreased funding provided by several states to university will stimulate
universities to seek ties with industry for funding.
The above two trends are both creating stronger ties between universities and
industry. Although a significant part of these ties will be local (domestic) there will be,
particularly in the case of big companies, an interest to have strong relations with
centers of excellence worldwide.
 The accessibility gap facing small and medium enterprises to leverage worldwide
centers of excellence can be filled by COMSOC that can make spike of excellence
available to professionals in small medium enterprises.
European universities will be participating to European cooperative research project focusing
on basic research and pre-competitive trials.
In the Far East more governments will fund university research (in particular Japan and South
Korea will continue the present trend, China, India and Vietnam are likely to start massive
research funding). In the USA research funds for university are likely to continue as they are
today.
However, in most countries, funding will be focused more and more to excellence centers thus
creating a wider gap among various universities.
The number of universities is likely to grow in the developing world but is going to
shrink in developed nations as the gap between excellence centers and the rest widens.
Telepresence and other communications technologies will foster remote teaching with
students and professionals alike taking courses from the best in class.
 On line learning and certification will be widely adopted and accepted. This can
present a tremendous opportunities to association focusing on education and
innovation. Specifically, this is a great opportunity for COMSOC.
Although COMSOC membership today comprises an almost equal share of academics and
industry (roughly 40% each) it is seen by many as an academic oriented association.
In ten years time, by playing its asset smartly, COMSOC academics roots may become a strong
asset for the industry and increase the appeal to this constituency.
2.3.2 Associations vs Telecom Operators
Telecom Operators will likely be different from the ones of today. The main backbones and
the normal wireline and wireless access will be a commodity characterized by a slower rate of
innovation (fiber networks are likely to dominate for many decades to come and wireless at
the edges will be dominated by terminal evolution rather than network evolution) although in
the beginning of the next decade there will be a lot of infrastructure that remains to be
upgraded and deployed.
The main focus will be on economy of scale, hence Operators will agree on sharing backbones
and rings, and poles for the antennas (and in many case the back hauling).
Operators are likely to cluster to steer the manufacturers’ offer and will make use of global
associations to keep their influence.
Their interest is likely to be less on technology and more on operation efficiency. Overall the
number of technical employees is decreasing and may level out to some 40% of the present
value as the infrastructure gets less labor intensive.
Most Telecom Operators will have definitely closed their research centers (a trend that has
emerged in this last decade) and will focus much more on market innovation with a horizon
span of a few months at most. At the same time most of these organizations will have created
internal innovation centers to remain abreast of evolution and its implication in their biz.
These are likely to be the “replacers” of todays’ Operators research centers.
The deployment of fiber to substitute the copper infrastructure and the massive use of
radio coverage, particularly in developing countries, will decrease significantly the
number of employees in the telecom sector.
In many countries Operators will be faced with the need to retrain their engineers to
take up different roles.
The edges of the network will see a tremendous increase of objects connected (IoT),
mostly via radio link, often through local radio area networks.
Telecommunication access will be embedded in many products thus creating the need
for (limited) telecommunications skill and know how in many sectors. Telecom
Operators may find this as an opportunity to extend their business beyond pure
transport and connectivity.
Associations of civil engineers are likely to become more and more interested in
getting some skill and know how in telecommunications.
 By partnering with civil engineering associations COMSOC may provide value to
Telecom Operators, fostering the penetration of telecommunications in several sectors.
 COMSOC can be ideally positioned to sustain the retraining of Telecom Operator
personnel and the training of personnel in other sectors.
 COMSOC should address the specific needs of the Innovation Centers of Telecom
Operators that will replace the research centers they have today. This actually creates
a clearer separation of interests between the academia (addressing basic research),
industry (addressing industrial -process/product research) and Telecom Operators
(addressing innovation, that is the implication of evolution on their turf).
2.3.3 Standards
Standards will continue to be essential at the physical infrastructure interconnection layer but
a significant portion of the interoperability at service layer will be solved at software level.
Any applications will come equipped with its interface and will be able to run on virtual
machines. Hence standards will continue to be needed at the physical level for direct
hardware interconnection and platforms with public interfaces running on the hardware will
be sufficient to allow third party development of applications.
Standards will be required to allow multiple parties to perform certain functions, such as
authentication.
Associations will continue to have a role in creating a consensus to accelerate standards
definition and in education to foster their application.
In our context, the majority of COMSOC standards will be in technology areas that are not yet
matured and that are not yet ready for prime time deployment. The focus will be on scholarly
standards, often on conceptual level, including reference models, frameworks, and terms and
definitions for new emerging technology areas.
 COMSOC Standards Activities shall provide a broad range of services to the industry
from pre-standardization activities through standards development and poststandardization activities, e.g. compliance testing and support of standards–related
academic curricula.
 COMSOC Standards Activities shall facilitate pre-standardization activities by research
projects organized by industry groups. This shall be done in partnership with COMSOC
Technical Committees for the purpose of identifying technology gaps as well as gaps in
standards and with a goal to discover early standardization opportunities. 
 COMSOC will need to establish a wide range of specialized Standards Committees that
will develop standards in the entire range of COMSOC’s technical scope. 
***What about patents?***
2.4 Association relation with policy makers and government institutions
The pervasive nature of technology will further create the need for engineers to cooperate
with policy makers all around the world. Besides, the nature of services is to be accessible
without regards to countries’ boundary and a global policy is required in many instances.
This is where associations may play an important role, providing a neutral understanding of
technology and its evolution.
❏ Technology is neutral but its application can have several impacts and affects the
Society. Having a framework for its application is important and such a framework has
to take into account technology evolution in a world without boundaries.
❏ Data are pervasive and very difficult to protect once they are published on the web.
Issues of privacy and ownership are central to the Information Society and their
safeguard requires an understanding of technology options.
Technology will keep increasing the range of services that can be offered and the
accessibility to information. Part of this information is sensitive, regarding the
personal sphere or the context of the Society as a whole.
The borderless nature of the information will grow even more as data move to the
clouds and can be potentially accessed from everywhere.
The possibility to correlate data originated in different places can make neutralization
at the source useless, since in many cases identity can be reconstructed by cross
referencing data.
 COMSOC, as an association of engineers has both the know how on technology (and its
evolution) and on the challenges of its application. It can provide a neutral but
invaluable support to regulators and government institutions.
Historically technical associations have had very little ties with regulatory authorities who
uses consultants to get reports on specific technology of interest. This approach was sound as
long as technology options were few. In a world that already offers more than can actually be
adopted a global view is important. This view shall be unbiased as much as possible.
Associations are important because their varied composition ensures a multi perspective
analyses and the peer review ensures independent assessment.
 COMSOC is not ready today to serve as an independent trusted reference point on
technology and its implication, although it gathers a multitude of contributions,
through papers and conferences. There is a need for a structured approach to
technology implication. 
 COMSOC should insert in its goals the provisioning of a neutral, peer reviewed yearly
document on technology evolution and its implications and have a Director
responsible for this goal and for positioning COMSOC as the ICT reference on
technology in the Society. 
 COMSOC should participate as an independent organization to the Science, Technology
and Society Forum, bringing any year an updated view on technology and its
application.
 COMSOC should establish formal relations, in addition to the present ones, with ITU
and other international organizations, claiming the role of neutral agency for
technology monitoring.
 COMSOC should provide a yearly report targeted to policy makers with an education
portfolio to explain technology impact. It is not a COMSOC objective to take position on
what should or should not be done but to clarify technology potential and implications.
The Information Society has just started, as more and more data are becoming available and
more and more ways of extracting meaning are found. This has profound societal
implications. An Association of engineers can consider itself just a shelf where data on
technology are shelved or it can take action to extract meaningful information out of those
data.
The evolution of data access is making these shelves less and less valuable (since the shelf is
becoming the web itself and data can be searched and retrieved from any access device).
What remains, and gets more valuable in the coming years, is the capability to extract
meaning and to peer review the result.
 COMSOC can and should become the organization policy maker will turn to, to
understand technology evolution and its implication.
2.5 Associations as cluster of freelance
The next decade will take for granted the ongoing transformation that has begun in these last
years with professionals working on projects rather than for a “company”.
As telecom companies (particularly Operators) becomes leaner and consultancy companies
gets more and more involved in the day to day running of telecom networks and services,
contract workers (freelance) will be in high demand and conversely there will be a big offer to
choose from.
These freelance workers will have only themselves to prove their asset, knowledge,
experience. There will no longer be the “brand” provided by a company they are working for.
The labor market in 2020 will see a significant shift towards contract workers
(freelance) not attached to any company.
The half life of knowledge in the ICT domain is today estimated around 5 years and by
2020 it is likely to be even shorter.
Freelance will need to find ways to decrease the cost of marketing themselves and
ways to stay up to date to continue to be sought after by the market.
 Associations will take up a crucial role in supporting the education marketing and
insurance of freelance. COMSOC should move quickly into this area and become the
association supporting this new generation of professionals.
 A grading of members should be found to support their marketability, with
certification of their know how. This will become as important as their experience. 
3.
POWERFUL DRIVERS CHANGING THE WORLD
Global challenges that have emerged over the past decades are likely to have an impact on
telecommunications and on telecommunications demand in the coming ones.
Although Crises are severe challenges to the status quo (and planned evolution) in the
telecommunications domain most of the crises that humanity is facing today represents a
tremendous opportunity for growth since telecommunications is a potential tool to help in
their taming.
 Telecommunications can provide significant help in decreasing the impact of the crises
and in helping in their solution. In turns, looming crises may stimulate evolution in
telecommunications technology and market.
In addition to the crises that have emerged there are several others, like the massive
migration of people across borders, the financial bankruptcy of entire Countries, the evolution
towards a job-less economy, the advent of unforeseen plagues and so on that may be looming
ahead.
In this document we are focusing on some crises that are in the top ranking of the agenda of
worldwide organizations and that, to a certain extent can also be the root to the other crises.
More importantly, these are crises where telecommunications has a direct role: Energy, Food,
Climate, changing world demography.
The aim here is focused on the potential impact that these can have on COMSOC marketplace,
in their relation to telecommunications players, markets, users.
 Crises focus the public opinion and have a great influence on the young generation in
choosing their education path. Emphasizing the role of telecommunications in these
crises can foster telecommunications evolutions and bring new, young, blood to the
field. Additionally, putting the emphases on telecommunications means to provide a
constructive perspective to the crises showing that there are ways to tackle or at least
mitigate their impact.
It is clear that crises will not be solved at the technology level but require a complex
interaction of political, social, economic forces.
Raising the awareness of what technology can do at these levels is an important contribution
to help more factual analyses and this is for sure a contribution that the technical
constituency can and should provide. Unfortunately, technical people in general are not
prepared to offer this contribution, often they use a lingo that is difficult to understand and
there is today a growing sentiment that most of the crises are the result of the technical and
scientific evolution.
This is not true, at least non generally true and quite the contrary the progress and well being
we enjoy today is the result of such scientific and technical evolution.
Nevertheless the global perception of technology is negative, particularly when people’s
attention is focused on looming crises or on disasters resulting from human actions (usually
in the past) like the radioactive leakage in the old Fukushima plant or some dams
construction, environmental pollution and so on.
 COMSOC as a global society based on factual data, peer reviewed, has the opportunity
and obligation to face concerns and explain the factual aspects. It is not expected to
take a stance but to report in an understandable language technical facts. It shall not
remain a circle of people talking to themselves but should rise to the challenge of
talking to the Society and to the World. This is possibly one of the best ways to make
the COMSOC name recognized outside the engineering community and indirectly to
stimulate the engineering community to be part of it.
 It is important that COMSOC endeavors in creating a social awareness of the relevance
of the communications field; activities should be built so that society recognize the
value of the field of communications.
 COMSOC should try to reach young people at undergraduate level and motivate them
to pursue the communications field by creating proper activities such as contests,
challenges etc. Chapters, acting locally, are ideally positioned to involve those that are
traditionally outsiders of current activities.
3.1 Energy Crises
Technology is a two edge sword: it increases the demand of (cheap) energy and can provide
the means to limit such an increase through more efficient use of energy.
Today’s world shows a dramatic variation in energy consumption, per Country and pro capita,
with the upper limits in the Arabian Peninsula followed by USA and the lower limits in central
Africa and some Asian Countries.
Moreover, projections indicate a steady rise in energy demand7.
7
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/highlights.html
The map (http://www.worldmapper.org/images/largepng/117.png ) shows the electricity
consumption in the various areas of the world. The area is drawn larger if consumption is
above world average, smaller if it is lower. Electricity consumption is a good indicator of
global energy consumption and it ties in with the welfare in the area.
The looming energy crises has several facets:
❏ The energy availability differential among different areas goes hand in hand with the
well being of the people, with, obviously, a better welfare in those areas having larger
energy consumption. The obvious strive towards better living condition generates a
push towards higher consumption.
❏ Based on present technologies there are limits to the availability of energy, in terms of
economic sustainability and time. Forecasts vary significantly but oil and gas reservoir
are bound to be exhausted in some decades (up to a hundred years in the most
optimistic forecasts); uranium is also a relatively scarce resource that may be
exhausted in a hundred years. Renewable energy sources are attractive but they may
not be applied in any field (such as aviation) nor can be available in all areas and in a
continuous way. Moreover their cost is higher, today, than fossil fuel.
❏ All forms of energy present some (sometime severe) drawbacks in their conversion
and usage. Be it the increase of CO2, the disposal of radioactive waste, the occupation
of soil, the diversion of food producing field to bio-fuel and so on.
❏ The global projected demand is not sustainable in the medium and long term (given
the present technological capabilities): if all people we have today on Earth were using
a pro-capita energy at the level of the USA average there would be a need of 5 planet
Earth to satisfy the demand.
❏ The political instability of several world areas where energy resources are available
projects a dark shadow on the future, and the attempt to control those areas by some
countries creates further international instability.
Telecommunications is a significant user of energy for running its infrastructure and the
demand for energy grows as more telecommunications equipment is deployed and
particularly more data centers. Additionally, the devices making use of telecommunications
present a further demand of energy estimated at four times the ones required by the
telecommunications infrastructures. Technology and careful design can limit the increase of
the energy demand in telecommunications.
Furthermore, telecommunications may:
- help in decreasing the need of energy,
- create a better awareness on consumption thus steering towards energy savvy behavior,
- provide alternative means to energy consuming processes (like transportation)
 COMSOC can increase the focus on energy in its various forms in its technical
committee and contribute to create awareness on how telecommunications are related
to the Energy Crises.
 COMSOC can stimulate confrontation on energy consumption in telecommunications
infrastructures and connected devices.
 COMSOC can promote conferences and sharing of experiences on smart cities,
transportation and other areas where the application of telecommunications services
may decrease energy consumption.
3.2 Food Crises
Close to 1 billion people are suffering from hunger in 2011. This figure is bound to increase in
this decade8 both because of the increase in population (affecting mostly undeveloped or
developing areas) and because of the shrinking of arable land.
There are many factors leading to an aggravation of the food crises:
❏ Climate change is expected to impact significantly the “map” of arable land and its
yield9. The increase in temperature will create flooding in densely populated and
cultivated areas (South East Asia) and will increase desertification in other areas (Sub
Sahara region). At the same time the increase in temperature will increase the yields of
many areas and will make it possible to cultivate regions like Siberia. The problem is
that since people have moved to where food production is higher a change in the yield
would imply major migration.
❏ The climate change alters the agricultural ecosystem with an increase in pest and weed
population leading to a decrease in yield. Again, the areas where this will be felt most
are the ones that are already affected by famine today.
❏ The cost of agriculture is bound to increase in this decade and this affects poor areas.
The need to transport food from distant region to cope with a diminished yield
contributes to increase the cost and to the famine to those area that are already
suffering today.
8
9
http://www.worldbank.org/foodcrisis/
http://www.grida.no/publications/rr/food-crisis/page/3567.aspx
As it can be seen from the above map (source Cline 2008,
http://www.grida.no/graphic.aspx?f=series/rr-food-crisis/figure18.jpg )the worst effects will
be experienced in those areas that are already today the ones suffering most from famine.
Technology has proven in the last two centuries that it can increase the yield of agriculture by
a factor of 4 to 10. This is achieved through irrigation, insecticides, OGM, monoculture,
mechanical support and by more effective distribution chains.
Telecommunications can play a role in mitigating the effects through widespread deployment
of sensors’ networks, and by improving the distribution chain.
The resulting changes in the economy of Countries will also have significant effect on what
telecommunications will be used for and of its role in these areas.
 COMSOC should include in its flagship Conferences a track on Telecommunications
applied to agriculture. There are already some Conferences looking at
telecommunications in developing Countries but the emphases is most on the
deployment of Infrastructures. What is also needed is a focus on the application side.
3.3 Climate Change Crises
As it has been shown in the previous part, the climate change is affecting the food crises. It is
affecting several other areas as well, and as seen for the food its effect are not uniform across
the globe. Some areas are bound to benefit from it, others are going to suffer.
The amount of data and their understanding is so far incomplete and too fragmented to have a
clear picture about the future. For a comprehensive analyses turn to the reports of the
Environmental Protection Agency10
10
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/index.html
Some factors are already understood although a complete understanding of their effect is still
lacking. One of these is the CO2 emissions. Sensors to measure emissions and to monitor
levels of CO2 will play a significant role in understanding and limiting this factor.
Disseminated sensors, such as those embedded in cell phones and vehicles, may provide very
dense data coverage and hence enable more accurate statistical studies of phenomena.
 COMSOC can help in facilitating the exchange of information in this area and promote
the adoption of sensors by creating an understanding on their role.
3.4 Aging Society Crises
Life expectancy has been growing steadily in 88% of the countries in these last 10 years.
This is an amazing achievement, and it results from the concurrent contribution of better
nutrition, safer water and better health care.
The map shows the life expectancy at birth, http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=255 .
The size of the various countries is proportional to the total of years of life expectancy of its
population. The size is equal to the Country area if the life expectancy matches the average
(67 years). It is bigger if the life expectancy is longer (the highest is in Japan with 81.6
months), it is lower if the life expectancy is shorter (the lowest is Zambia with 32.8 year).
An aging society is a different society form the one we used to have. This aging society is
becoming reality with the baby boomer now entering retirement age and having a 20+ life
expectancy ahead.
Along with it, the aging society brings:
❏ sustainability problems at society level (how to pay for retirement, how to pay for an
increased health care bill)
❏ problems at the personal level (new kinds of age related illness, different needs and
consumption patterns).
Clearly the aging crises is not something one wants to solve by stopping (or worse reversing)
aging. It is therefore quite different in nature from the other two crises presented before.
What is needed are ways to solve, reduce the problems aging is producing.
In terms of sustainability technology can help in decreasing the cost of the care bill;
technology can also provide answers to fight/relieve age related illness.
In addition, communications, tele-presence, simpler-natural interfaces can help alleviate some
of the problems faced by the elderly population.
❏ The economics in aging goes from the extreme of wealthy people that have the money
to adopt technology and use it to the one of having to spare the cent having lost the
income deriving from work.
 COMSOC has the opportunity of caring to the interest of elderly engineers and leverage
on their “voluntarism” to make a dent into the aging crises.
 COMSOC can promote dissemination of knowledge on applied sensors networks, bioengineering and genomics for those parts related to communications.
3.5 New economies gaining the upper hand
The BRIC countries have surfaced to the main stage of the world economy in the last decade.
They will continue to remain within the main world economies in this and in the next decade.
A few more countries will emerge in the pool of largest world economies, Vietnam being one
of them and possible Indonesia. In the longer term, other countries may join the top ones, like
Nigeria. These latter will not compete, anyhow, in the top five, as it will be the case for China
and India.
As wealth is more and more related to the mobilization of intelligence and mind capital, those
Countries having more “brains” and being capable of leveraging those brains, first by
preparing them with top education and then having them functioning at full capacity by
providing ultra-broadband connectivity infrastructures will be able to become world leaders.
Low income Countries are today suffering from over-population, poor services, low grade
infrastructure and usually high birth rate that compound their challenges. Once a virtuous
development process is in place the number of people become an advantage.
 Top Notch Education applied to a huge mass of individuals is the single most important
factor in the transformation of a Country to leverage the Information Society.
China and India are likely to become among the top five economies in the world. The
investment in education and in infrastructures make them also the largest market. Volume is
crucial in fostering innovation and these countries are likely to be the most innovative ones in
the next decade, not necessarily because they will be developing innovation “in house”,
although it will often be the case, but because they will be the largest marketplace where
innovation will take hold.
Some frictions may be expected as a rebalance in leadership takes place. Some of it will be
positive since those countries that are leading today will focus more on remaining leaders
increasing the innovation pace.
❏ The overall world wealth is going to increase worldwide, much faster in some areas
than in others.
❏ More education in scientific disciplines and more jobs will be created resulting in a
wider potential audience for COMSOC.
 COMSOC has the opportunity to become a leader in countries like China and India that
will be at the economic forefront in the next decade.
China and India, although are likely to raise at the top of world economy, are likely to remain
quite different and will face different problems with respect to those countries that are today
at the top of the economic ladder.
❏ China in 2011 is expected to consume as much energy as the United States. However,
their pro-capita consumption is 1/5 of the one in the United States and by factoring in
that a good portion of manufacturing in China is dedicated to export the usage of procapita energy for the local people’s advantage is even lower.
❏ Although the economic value of China and India will place these two countries at the
top of world economies, the pro-capita revenue will be much lower than the other
world leading economies. Hence, their priorities will be different. India, in particular,
has less control on population growth and is likely to suffer much more from the food
crises. The low pro-capita income does not support massive import, not even for food.
❏ The effort in the development of communications infrastructures will be very strong in
both China and India. Given the very dense population it would make sense to expect a
strong deployment of fixed lines, fibre loop. It is however unlikely to happen, at least in
this decade and the focus is likely to remain on wireless infrastructure, particularly
outside of wealthy district in some urban areas.
❏ Wireless access will dominate both India and China and their huge market is likely to
foster innovation in dense wireless access.
 COMSOC may need to specialize part of its offer to these audiences. What may fit the US
audience is unlikely to fit a Chinese one.
 COMSOC should promote low cost educational events to large mass of people using
local experts. 
 COMSOC should promote events to boost innovation among people such as contest,
awards etc. To advance the state of the art COMSOC should promote events to foster
digital inclusion and decrease social and technological imbalance, especially in
developing countries. This can be achieved by making local members aware that they
should use their knowledge to solve local economical, social and educational problems. 
❏ China has become the world manufacturer and it is important to notice that the
reasons that led to this are now getting weaker and will probably fade away by the end
of this decade (low wages, low cost of production as consequence of lower standards of
safety and disregard for the environment). China is rapidly deploying countermeasures
to ensure that their manufacturing edge can continue as those factors decrease in
importance. A point in case is Foxconn that has recently announced a plan to “hire” 1
million robots in their plants by 2014. Another point in case is Alibaba that has created
a gigantic intermediation market for reaching Chinese manufacturers.
 COMSOC should look at the manufacturing industry evolution, with all its aspects of
robotization, outsourcing, off shoring... and the many relations existing with
telecommunications infrastructures.
3.6 New emerging world area
The acceleration in adoption of wireless technology has been a worldwide phenomenon but
the places where it was most surprising and generated most awe was in developing and
under-developed countries.
Some of these countries have also started a significant economic evolution (or revolution)
moving from a basically agricultural economy to an industrial economy, living the changes of
the industry revolution of the XVIII and XIX century but at an accelerated pace and using new
technologies.
The South-East Asia is a point in case. Other areas in Africa are likely to follow, possibly in the
second part of this decade and may become emerging economies by 2020. The whole of Latin
America (except Brazil that has already made or is well ahead in the transition) is another
emerging area.
As a whole they are a constituency that can represent a market of 1 billion people that can be
grouped in three areas
❏ South East Asia, with close to 450 million people
❏ Latin America, with 460 million people
❏ Central and South Africa, with 350 million people
These three areas are significantly different in terms of issues they are facing, of political
situations, mix of cultures and natural resources. It remains to be seen if they will actually
consolidate or if they will go through different aggregation (China may become the attraction
point for Vietnam, possibly Thailand and Singapore whilst Indonesia may team up with
Malaysia) or if they will fail to find a common interest (Central and South Africa may be the
most difficult aggregation).
Because of their differences each area may see a different kind of evolution although all of
them are likely to use very similar network architectures and serve most of their
communications needs via wireless access (in residential market, with the notable exception
of Singapore that will have a complete fiber infrastructure also at the access level).
In terms of becoming an important player in telecommunications probably only Vietnam and
Brazil will succeed in having a local industry supported both by the local market and by a
strong export.
The overall situation can evolve quite differently depending on factors that are difficult to
foresee on a ten years horizon.
 The areas identified are surely important in terms of population and some may become
important in terms of industry. Due to the difficulty in forecasting COMSOC may adopt
a tactical stance, monitoring the evolution and entering with specific initiatives,
possibly through local societies, as the situation may suggest.
 COMSOC should promote programs to eliminate the economical exclusion of low
income members such as those in Latin America and Africa. The low membership
uptake in this region is also due to this lower income. 
4.
TELECOMMUNICATIONS in 2020
Telecommunications today are based on very complex and capital intensive infrastructures.
Although the pace of technology evolution has accelerated the introduction of innovation in
telecommunications, looking at telecom infrastructures from a distance the overall change in
a 10 years period is limited. In 2010 we have technologies we did not have in the year 2000,
such as the very first LTE infrastructures, MIMO antennas, some 40 and 160 Gbps optical
links, Terarouters etc, but in percentage, most of 2010 network technologies date back to the
last century.
Counterbalancing this substantial inertia in evolution we have seen in the last decade:
- a significant expansion of infrastructures, particularly in developing countries and in
2010 most new equipment was purchased and deployed in those countries.
- a shift from wireline to wireless communications and this went hand in hand with the
growth of customers that have now moved massively to wireless terminals in a ratio of
2:1.
- a growth of Internet based services that has pushed customers in developed countries
to the adoption of broadband access and this has created a growing market for ADSL
first and fibre in the last miles more recently. The broadband access in developing
countries is marginal because of economics, both market and network wise and
because of the latter is starting through the use of wireless broadband.
- a growth in information created, mostly by individuals, consumed and available that
has reached a pace of increment close to the one predicted by Moore for the transistor,
and that has in turn created an increase in traffic that exceeds the Moore’s law.
-
an explosion in service availability to create, access, use data and information that in
turns has ushered in
By 2020 we therefore forecast:
❏ The backbone and access infrastructure network-side will be based in fibre, both in
developed and developing countries;
❏ The access customer side will be based on optical fibre in today’s developed countries
and in (some) urban areas of some developing countries (BRIC) whilst in the other
areas will be mostly based on wireless;
❏ The decreasing cost in localized access areas will increase the number of independent
infrastructures created by municipality and third parties (non Telecom Operators);
❏ The capabilities of terminals will keep growing including their capability of creating
local networks and to act as bridges. This in turns will give rise to bottom up access
infrastructures;
❏ Terminals will be embedded in many objects (or putting it in another way, objects will
embed communications capability);
❏ Sensors will be a significant component in network termination, and will be embedded
in many objects, sometimes being a structural part of the object itself (smart
materials); they will be programmable and there are going to be APIs associated to
most objects as part of the design and production process.
❏ Many objects will embed displays hence many more will be using broadband (mostly
wireless BB).
❏ As telecommunications spread in latitude and becomes embedded, hence basically
hidden, the role of telecommunications expert will change. Most industry will need to
have telecommunications as part of their competence, particularly in terms of services
based on connectivity, whilst the core telecommunications competences, transport,
protocols, switching, will see a diminishing audience of engineers as they will become
embedded in Lego-like components.
❏ The dividing line between telecommunications and computing will start to fade and
along with it the characterization of expert in telecommunications vs expert in
computation.
Figure 4.0 Expected evolution of COMSOC TCs by 2020 (grading --- to +++: new TCs in red)
Ad Hoc& Sensor Networks +++
Cognitive Networks +
Communications & Information Security +
Communications Quality and Reliability Communications Software -Communications Switching & Routing -Communications Systems Integration & Modeling Communication Theory Computer Communications ++
Data Storage =
e-Health =
High-Speed Networking -
Information Infrastructure & Networking +
Internet =
Multimedia Communications =
Network Operations & Management =
Optical Networking =
Power Line Communications Radio Communications Satellite & Space Communications Signal Processing & Communications Electronics Tactical Communications & Operations Transmission, Access, & Optical Systems +
Wireless Communications +++
Social Communications
Massive Distributed Systems Communications
Data Centric Networks, Data Management, Semantics
Autonomic Networks, Viral Networks, Parasitic Communications
Identification and Authentication, including biometrics
Energy control
Smart Ambients
Bio Communications
In the following specific details are provided.
4.1 Technologies entering the arena
Today’s telecommunications infrastructures are based on technologies contributing to the
optical, wireless, processing (both hardware and software, including switching and signal
processing) and storage (including distributed storage like clouds). These will continue to
have a major role in 2020. Additionally, however, we can expect a growing importance of
bioengineering, nanotechnology, sensors and smart materials and more generally of smart
environment, as small as a single object and as large as a smart building and a smart city.
It is to be noted that there is a third revolution in the making asking for a more
comprehensive consideration of many technologies and approaches in science, rather
than segmented approaches that focus on specific domain.
 This is a challenge that COMSOC will have to face, balancing specialization and in depth
analyses with overall coverage. This latter is technology non-specific and application
domain specific and contrasts with the present COMSOC that by large is technology
specific and domain non-specific.
 COMSOC will need to promote the formation of new professionals to act as agent of
multidisciplinary field 
 COMSOC needs to pay attention to the number of multi-disciplinary areas in which
telecommunications has a role and include them in its technical scope 
 COMSOC should consider a revisitation of its Technical Committees, clearly identifying
those that are looking at basic telecom/computation components and those that
leverage on those components (applications areas). They will probably appeal to
different constituencies and may be run in different ways. TCs shall become attraction
points generating interest and membership growth, can be sponsored directly by
industry.
4.1.1 Bioengineering
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏ Have widespread use of bio interfaces, enabling the connection of electronics to bio, in
areas like vision prosthetics, muscle activation, brain interactions, delivery of drugs,
monitoring of chemical, motion and electrical parameters.
❏ Have a significant understanding of biological networks and the working of the brain
❏ Have applications of the physics of living systems in business ecosystems dynamics,
reflecting allowable symmetry-breaking processes (related to phase-transitions).
Communications will be embedded in many devices that will either be in contact with the skin
or embedded in the body. General requirements will be on low energy
consumption/dissipation, energy scavenging, low/medium bit rate, flexibility in parameters
detection.
The skin is likely to be used as conductor to connect various sensors and actuators to a
communications hub.
 Research and technology evolution for skin and low consumption device
communications will be a major research theme (BAN – Body Area Networks). A close
cooperation with biochemists, physiologists, medical doctors, smart fabric and
electronic engineers is essential.
 Application of the understanding of neuron networks to communications networks:
actually neuron networks are considered to be the most effective structural basis for
coexistence of informational processing (both segregation and integration) and
communications. Analogies between neuron networks and future communications
networks will allow applying some principles behind brain functioning for
development, management and control of said networks.
 Usage of body (including DNA) characteristics for secure identification in
communications services.
4.1.2 Nanotechnology
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏ Have become a ubiquitous component of several materials, giving them “smart
properties” like surface sensitivity, conductivity, display, storage and processing.
❏ Have enabled low cost optical switching (lambda switching).
❏ Have increased energy storage capacity and speed of recharging in batteries.
Micro switching nodes as well and objects becoming micro network nodes at the edges of
today’s network will create a completely new scenario and require possibly new approaches
to study networks.
Future telecom engineers may need chemical skills as well as an understanding of complexity
science given the sheer number of interconnected entities.
 The new area of micro-communications may become important
4.1.3 Sensors
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏
❏
❏
❏
❏
❏
Have grown in the ten-hundreds of billions
Have become “networks” on their own
Have become more and more flexible
Have become smaller and smaller, some reaching the nano scale
Have become embedded in objects
Have become an integral part of our perception of ambient, in some instances
extending our sensory network
Sensors, numerically speaking, will make up for most of the users of the telecommunications
network. The traffic they generate will be quite varied, going from a few bytes once in a while
to a continuous stream of data (video sensors). In terms of capacity the video sensors will
have the upper hand (video security cameras will be numbered in the billions). As wireless
communications will (start to) ensure a dense bandwidth many cell phones will double up as
always on video feeder.
At the same time the other, and much more numerous, sensors will have the upper hand in
terms of transactions. The usage of the network by humans will be relegated in between these
two classes leading to an inversion of the Gaussian traffic distribution of the last century and
to a (left) rise of the sloped curve of the first part of this century.
In the figure we see this evolution (qualitative representation) showing on the Y axes the
number of transactions and on the X the size of the transaction.
In the last century the traffic was mostly voice calls, hence the Gaussian with the top at the
average 3 minutes call; today the volume of traffic is impacted by the video , in ten years time
the video will continue to have a great impact but along with it we will see a tremendous
growth of traffic generated by sensors with thousands of billions of short transactions.
It is quite evident that the network architecture that was fit to support one traffic pattern is
unlikely to be fit for a completely different one.
More specifically, as in the transition from the last century to the present one we have seen
the rise of CDN (Content Distribution Network and Broadcast/Multicast transport paradigm)
in this decade we will see the rise of million of edge networks (sensors networks) and also of
different, more energy efficient protocols (non IP).
 A novel branch of communications will address sensors and new demand for
standards, protocols and signal processing will arise
 The variety of interconnections, many dynamically continuously changing and
autonomics, will bring to the fore the study of complex systems and will connect to
biological study of nervous system
 Data networks will become very important to face the huge amount of data present in a
myriad of data centers, from behemoth DC to home sized DC.
4.1.4 Smart Materials
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏ Have better production processes that along with better molecular manipulation
capability will make it possible to “design” materials according to their desired
functionality. Among these the ability to connect and self identify themselves. For
example new developments of meta-materials (artificially structured materials that
are designed to interact with and control electromagnetic waves) will allow producing
lighter and more energy-efficient antennas, and reducing size of storage batteries and
solar cells.
❏ Have new production processes: although many objects will still look like today, an
assembly of different parts to deliver the required functionalities, some objects will
deliver certain functionality through the construction material itself. More specifically,
plastic electronics can be embedded in the construction material, and even sprayed on
surface, display can be a surface characteristic rather than an assembled part, the
communication antenna will be the object itself and so on.
❏ Have much more flexibility in terms of functionality. This will allow large scale
production of products that can be customized at the point of sale or even later during
their life time. Communications will play a significant role in this customization.
The progressive adoption of smart materials is likely to have an effect similar to the
invention/adoption of the moving assembly line by Ford on October 7, 1913. It will change
the way we build products and will place telecommunications at the core of the design since
through telecommunications the product can be dressed up with functionality, can be
monitored, his user can be trained, it can interact with other objects, it can be updated and
customized to the environment, to the user, to the lifetime.
 Manufacturing is a relevant area for telecommunications, and this requires a cross
fertilization of knowledge in which COMSOC can play an important role
 A crucial aspect in future manufacturing will be the robotization of plants. Foxconn has
already announced a plan to deploy 1 million robots in its plants by 2014. These will
be autonomous systems and will be based on autonomic communications. COMSOC
has to take the lead in this area.
 As in McLuhan “the medium is the message” with smart materials “the smart material
is the communications infrastructure” and this creates a new perspective for COMSOC.
4.1.5 Smart Ambients
The advent of smart objects, defined as objects aware of their environment and able to adapt
to it, leads to the creation of a smart ambient that can exist because of a ubiquitous
connectivity fabric. Most of this connectivity fabric is created by the objects populating the
ambient.
A smart ambient is an ambient that is aware of its constituent parts, understand their specific
functionalities and can manipulate them to create a harmonious ensemble fitting the
person(s) that is at that particular moment in it.
❏ There will be as many smart ambient as there are ambient. Smart buildings, smart
hospitals, smart school, smart malls, smart factories and so on. Additionally there will
be smart aggregation of smart ambient, like smart cities, smart multimodal traffic
hubs, smart Countries and so on.
❏ Smart ambient will not just be a clustering of smart components. Their smartness is an
add on onto those smart component (and less smart ones). That requires a modeling of
the components and the ability of understanding and manipulating it.
Communications within a smart ambient and among smart ambient resulting from
aggregation is crucial and has a variety of requirements. These are met by the use of many
technologies, from the ones related to smart materials to the manipulation of data, to self
management and autonomics.
It is the mixture of all of these that creates those emerging properties that characterize a smart
ambient.
 Need to address behavior of complex systems
 Need to address emerging behavior theory, semantics interpretation of data for
context creation, mixing data and communications
 Need to take an ecosystem view, including the areas of regulation, perception,
economics, conflict of interest
To clarify these issues we present two points in case: smart buildings and smart cities.
COMSOC should be prepared to focus on many more, implementing the shift
from a Society “technology focused” to a Society “focusing on the applications of
communications related technology”. This is “au pair” with the focus shift of major
Telecom Operators.
4.1.5.1 Smart Buildings
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏ Have new buildings completely “wired” (in sense of ubiquitous pervasive
communications, both wired and wireless) and controlled as a single living entity.
❏ Have old buildings in the process of “retrofitting” to become “smart buildings”. This is
likely to take place under the pressure to decrease energy consumption and to use
locally produced energy.
❏ Have products that start to make use of the smart ambient provided by the smart
buildings and integrating their functionality in the ones provided by the building (e.g.
make use of sound and displays provided by the walls, use power through induction,
hook up on the local area network, relay on authentication provided by the building,
accept guidelines and directive from the ambient…).
Smart buildings will be network (and often very complex networks) in themselves requiring
specific networking expertise, operation and management, and interaction with a variety of
users, humans as well as objects (and sensors). They will be communications providers to a
variety of terminals, some being a stable part of the building, many being “in transit”.
They will support mirroring functions, authentication, visibility segmentation, data storage,
conditional access and so on. To all effect they will be a communications network formed by
many communications networks.
Their complexity may vary, going from a private villa to a skyscraper, but they will have in
common many issues, like the management of different constituencies having different
interfaces and functionalities.
 COMSOC needs to support these networks of networks and their associated
constituencies, from civil engineers, to installers, to consumer electronics
 COMSOC needs to enter the area of data mining, analyses, management at the different
levels entailed by an aggregation provided by a smart building. There may be a specific
Technical Committee dedicated to this area.
 The communications fabric and the data management provide the common ground for
all constituencies involved. COMSOC can promote the establishment of a common
knowledge in this area and prepare courses on this common fabric.
4.1.5.2 Smart Cities
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏ Have municipalities deployed sensors and monitoring systems to capture the various
city’s parameters, from transportation to energy, garbage disposal to logistics,
schooling to elderly care.
❏ Have complete broadband coverage of major urban centers and many smaller centers.
❏ Have enforced rules on data exposure and management, including regulations on the
presence of sensors to detect certain data (pollution, CO2 emissions, …)
There is today a growing interest to apply technology to create a more efficient, safer and
pleasing city ambient. This will increase significantly in this decade and there will be a
significant number of cities at different degrees of smartness. They will be based on a
pervasive communications infrastructure, significantly extending today’s infrastructure, and
will integrate many technologies and monitor/control processes.
There is a large audience that COMSOC can target in this area, numbered in the millions.
 COMSOC needs to be part of this evolution, setting up specific conferences, attracting a
new audience, becoming part of the “conceptual design”. This makes sense since
telecommunications and local area communications is the first enabler.
 The Smart City requires an “Engineer Vision” as an enabler. This vision needs to be
made viable through Social and Economical considerations but since technology
provides the only solid stepping stone COMSOC can be the ideal reference point.
4.2 Viral Networks
❏ Internet as a Network of Networks will further grow and most of this growth will occur
at the edges whilst the “inner networks”, covering large areas and across the globe, will
tend to decrease in number (owners’ number). The networks at the edges will be
created by a variety of entities and will number in the billions. Most of them will be
BAN (Body Area Networks), PAN (Personal Area Networks), AAN (Ambient Area
Networks), VAN (Vehicular Area Networks) and Sensors Networks.
These will aggregate into larger local area networks that spontaneously aggregates in
even larger networks to create Viral Networks that are not characterized by any
ownership domain.
❏ The commoditization of the big networks will support the evolution towards virtual
networks at the edges since there will be very little economic incentive from a
Network Operator point of view to cover the last meter and the last inch. These will be
covered by new players as an extension of their products (in the consumer electronics,
vehicular industry and health care area predominantly).
❏ Many terminals will be able to create a surrounding network and this will connect with
overlapping networks effectively providing coverage over large areas.
❏ Future viral networks will be pervasive and this makes the design and control highly
complex. These new challenges are at the intersection between non-linear dynamics
and statistical thermodynamics, a place which is under the spot even today for gaining
more detailed insight into neural-mechanistic events and processes of the brain. For
example this will bring to the development of network and service architectures
capable of generating feedback loops connecting multi levels of self-organization.
This evolution will bring within COMSOC audience new professionals, like civil engineers,
medical doctors, shop designers, but also private citizens and this can significantly expand
COMSOC potential audience but at the same time may require a different way to relate with
them.
 Need to address different constituencies and to talk to them in terms of application
domain rather than technology domain. 
 Terminals are crucial in this area. See also 4.4.
 A different approach to standardization may be required.
4.3 The Data Tsunami and the Software Networks
The data carried by the telecommunications networks have steadily increased over time
but in the last 20 years their growth has become exponential due to the advent of
multimedia communications. The growth has been tackled and supported thanks to optical
fibers network that scaled of 3-4 order of magnitude the network capacity and through
new architectures (Content Delivery Networks).
This growth is going to continue in this decade, and the following ones with an expectation
of 100 fold growth from 2010 to 2020 to reach 10+ ZettaBytes (compare to the 100
Exabytes estimated in 2010).
The network capacity will continue to scale and support this flow. New architectures for
CDN will be required, and will affect particularly the network edges taking advantage of
distributed storage and storage capacity in the home, in the terminals and at the edges.
The data tsunami will change significantly the way society, enterprises and individuals
perceive, produce and interact. The seamless support provided by the network
infrastructure will make these data always available as if they were local, shifting the
focus from the communications to the interplay with and among data.
 This can shift the audience interest towards data and data centric networks further
contributing to fade the boundaries between COMSOC and the Computer Society. It
does not diminishes the importance of networks and related technical issues but
makes these servant of the others.
4.3.1 Data Creation
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏ Have plenty of devices that will make data creation an integral part of their operation
❏ Have localization has a ubiquitous function providing a tagging that complement time
stamping of any data created.
❏ See a wide variety of data, from simple, once in a while message requiring a few bytes,
to continuous streams of HD video.
❏ Have Research Centers creating staggering amount of data, be it in physics or in
bioscience.
❏ There will be more data created than storage capacity to store them (cross point in
2013)
As more and more electronics permeates objects and more and more sensors are deployed
the amount of data generated will keep growing. Object that in 2011 are already generating
data, like vehicles, will generate even more in ten years time and will likely transmit them.
People will actively use data creation as part of their everyday life (recording a lesson in a
class, a meeting, an excursion…) exploiting the easiness provided by terminals. Additionally,
people will create data indirectly, e.g. by wearing sensors for health monitoring.
Security cameras will be ubiquitous creating a huge flow of data, some restricted to a local
area, some dispatched far away.
Data will not just “be created”. They are likely to be contextualized, adding time stamp,
location, identity of the entity that has generated them, aggregated with other data and
possibly may be encapsulated into a service governing the access to the data.
A data, once created, can be accessed in a variety of ways and this broadens the meaning of
communications.
 Data are an integral part of communications and COMSOC will have to consider the
evolution of data creation as a core business.
 Processing and abstraction (see Metadata 4.3.5) are needed to solve the problem of
insufficient storage and consumption capacity. This will create a host of
functionalities to digest data that will shift the value perception of the end user.
COMSOC will need to ride the wave as the basic value of information collapse.
4.3.2 Data Storage
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏ Have increased 50 times the capacity, both in mass market and in enterprise domain
❏ Have decreased 100 times the cost per bit
❏ Have created a storage capacity at the edges of the telecommunications network that
far exceed the one of any data center
❏ Have provided TB in handheld devices
The continuous decrease in price of storage and its increased capacity (although not matching
the data creation volume) creates huge storage at the edges of the network, in the home, in
the “hand”. New communications paradigms will be developed to exploit this new
architecture with data no more centralized but clustered.
Likewise, new storage architectures, beyond today’s cloud, will be in place and research in
this domain will be intense. Communications plays a crucial role in these new architectures.
 Data Centric Networks will be an important area for COMSOC
 Themes related to availability of storage, accessibility, security will play a major role in
telecommunications and shall be addressed by COMSOC
 Data storage architectures, like Cloud Storage, have to be addressed
4.3.3 Data Transport
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏
❏
❏
❏
❏
❏
❏
❏
Be achieved through fiber at multi Tbps
Be achieved through wireless at Gbps
Be achieved by proximity
Be achieved through state change (updates of Data Clusters)
Be achieved through the cloud
Be achieved through skin
Be achieved through electrical, plumbing, lightning and other means
Be achieved through optical pills (optical storage sent over wheels)
Data transport will increase 100 times over this decade. The international and domestic
backbones will see an expansion of the optical fiber and the adoption of 100 – 1000 Gbps links
based on DWDM. Optics will continue to be a major area for research and industry.
At the access level two main evolutions will continue: fiber deployment and wireless
coverage. Both are expected to see significant efforts in research and in industry. 1 Gbps both
on fibre and on cell will be common in 2020.
In public wireless area the main effort will be towards dense coverage to support multi Mbps
to many customers. Major changes can be expected in the wireless domain fueled by the
multiplication of micro-cells. WiFi areas created by the terminals, sharing of network access
bandwidth, vertical roaming, use of unlicensed spectrum, use of dynamically allocated
spectrum (SDR). As incandescent lightning will be replaced by LED lightning these latter will
be used s downlink communications in the 100 Mbps range.
A significant part of this evolution is fostered by the terminal evolution (see 4.4). These are
also going to play a role in new communications architectures with flow of data from one
terminal to another (one vehicle to another, one object to another) with the possible role of
bridge to create dynamic local area networks.
Given the massive storage capacity of terminals they will also be able to capture data by
proximity and relay them to other terminals, once in range. This paradigm may find
application in developing countries, in rural areas, as well as in urban spaces, as an example
by capturing bulk data in front of a shop and using them once home, or in vehicular
communications where the passing of a vehicle through a gate (a toll station, a recharging
station…) can result in an update of its data base.
The global data architecture will overlay the physical communications pipes. Large data
centers as well as smaller and focused ones (up to a terminal data base size) may be linked
one another and kept in synch. Hence, any new data may result in a global change of state at
the Data Layer. This architecture makes data local and steer the network evolution towards a
data centric architecture.
A part of it may be taken by the cloud. This goes beyond a layered and diffused data hosting. It
can become a data processing and it can also become the bridge between object as atoms and
objects as web presence, upon which services may be constructed.
A role in data communications may also be taken by human to object communications
through the usage of the skin. A host of medical appliances (and sensors) may use the skin as
a conductor. Specific protocols may be required.
Electric metering and sensors of various kinds may take advantage of other physical
conductors, like electric wires, plumbing, pavement, textiles, wall paper and paintings.
Different protocols may also be required and these special networks will need to be bridged
to the main networks.
Finally, data storage support may become so dense, able to store multi TB in tiny optical grain,
that a portion of the data communications may take place by physically moving these storage
support, as it is the case today with the delivery of music, movies through CDs and DVDs.
This is an area that has not been considered as part of the “telecommunications” domain,
although it entails massive communication. It is not likely to be killed by the broadband pipes
and it should be considered as a part of the telecommunications because of the interactions
with the general data layer.
Future data transport is likely to consist of several different architectures and physical means
and there is the challenge to have this operated seamlessly and effectively.
 Data Centric Networks have to become a major area for COMSOC
 Alternative Data communications technologies will become “locally” important and a
presence of COMSOC in these areas can greatly benefit an expanded membership
 Data encapsulation in services creates different paradigms for their transport (Web 3.0
and beyond). It is an area overlapping with the Computer Society that can be either
seen as transparent to communications “dumb pipes” or central to communications
since the communications aspects are an integral part of the data encapsulation
characteristics. COMSOC should work for and support this latter.
4.3.4 Data Processing
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏ Have increased 100 fold the performance, using multi-core, multi parallel systems.
❏ Be based on new widespread distributed, clustered processing architecture
(processing cloud).
❏ Be performed in a variety of objects, as tiny as sensors and tags and as big as
supercomputers clusters.
❏ Have seen the flanking of alternative processing paradigm, namely molecular and
quantum computing. Whilst it can be reasonably predicted that molecular computing
will be used in specific niches (like genomics) it is difficult to make any prediction
about quantum computing. If it pans out, issues like new cryptographic systems will
have to be addressed.
The cost of processing will continue to decrease in this decade, at the same rate it did in the
last four decades. The processing capacity for mass market will reach a plateau since it
exceeds demand, probably in this first part of the decade. Some mass market processing
needs, however, will continue to put pressure on processing performances, such as the chips
for the rendering of video signals. As video will move in this decade to the 4k standard higher
performances will be required for signal processing in television sets, in video cameras and
related devices.
Increasing performance will be seen, coupled with lower energy demand, in handheld
equipment and sensors. This latter will change some processing architecture (processing is
cheaper than transmission in terms of energy bill). Particularly, sensor networks are likely to
exploit local sensors processing capability for decreasing the number of data transmitted.
Also, signal processing in terminals may become much more demanding, particularly towards
the end of the decade once the terminal can be asked to employ more sophisticated signal
analyses to increase spectrum efficiency. In turns, this will lead to a change in the
communications protocols and architectures (see 4.4).
The massive distributed processing where the “cloud” becomes a giant computer brings to the
fore issues of latency and this in turn may push towards optical networks architectures not
requiring an electronic signal manipulation (passive optical add drop).
 Processing and communications impact architectures and COMSOC should be involved
in this.
 The processing at the network edges displaces the intelligence and affects the current
network architecture. It can result, as some are claiming, in a transparent network or
in a diffused network control. This latter may be the case once we consider the
network as spanning beyond the present boundaries to include the networks at the
edges. The problem in this expansion, of course, is the ownership domain that does
not span across these networks. 
 Sensors networks cannot be considered separating the aspects of communications
from the ones of processing. A unified view is required.
 The cloud is going to be distributed over the network, over the edge networks, over the
terminals (in many cases indistinguishable from edge networks) and over objects. Its
processing is coupled with its inner and external communications capabilities
(especially when latency is an issue) and shall be an important area in COMSOC.
The next decade will see, eventually, the failing of the Moore’s law applied to silicon.
This will create a major earthquake in many industry sectors. It is likely that the
overall processing power will continue to increase but such an increase will be based
on carbon rather than silicon.
4.3.5 Data, Metadata, Semantics
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏
❏
❏
❏
Have creation of meta data at creation, on demand, as a service, as a pre-processing
Have significant data correlation
Have data abstraction
Have semantics derivation
The Data Tsunami makes possible on the one hand to create new information by processing
and correlating data and on the other hand it forces to sieve through data, effectively creating
new data. These are usually addressed to as Meta Data. Most of future fruition of data by end
users is actually fruition of meta data.
The creation of these meta data may be further refined to derive the semantics and by
packaging it in ways that are most effective, or meaningful, to the user, in a way hence
creating a meta semantics level.
There are many approaches to this data “refinement” and adaptation, including data
correlation, abstraction, semantics derivation.
Telecommunications, being aware of certain aspects (like location, usage history, terminal
being used, ambient characteristics, social community of the user…) can deliver, or provide
the necessary parameters to third parties to enable many kinds of data refinement.
It can also act as an independent and trusted party to provide access to raw or semi processed
data for global analyses by third parties.
In doing this a Network Operator enters into the data service domain. This can be seen as a
major shift from the present role of Operators and involves a lot of regulatory issues. At the
same time it requires a lot of technology, e.g. for data neutralization.
By 2020 it may be expected that a number of “Data Organizations” will have been set up and
this will be a most important area both for enabling biz and as a biz in itself.
 The Data Management is an important part of the future business and some Telecom
Operators will be involved in that. Beyond regulatory aspects there are many
technological aspects that COMSOC can support through its technical groups.
 The availability of contextual, emotional, expectational data can drive new ways to
control communications flow and the networks may need to negotiate with those
capturing the semantics of communication. It is a completely new space that COMSOC
needs to consider.
 Construction of metadata can provide an intelligent layer to data communication,
leading to new “intelligent network architectures” above the signaling layer.
4.3.6 Data visualization
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏
❏
❏
❏
❏
❏
❏
Have widespread 3D visualization through a variety of technologies
Have large, paper thin displays
Have bendable displays
Have color reflective display supporting video
Have resolution beyond the human eye
Have widespread haptic displays
Have many applications to display complex data set
Display technology keeps delivering better images in a better form factor. Screens by 2020
will come in many forms, and some of them will be dirty cheap so that they will become part
of many objects.
3D visualization will be common, although a significant portion of the content will remain 2D,
but with a resolution exceeding the one of the human eye. This means that the bandwidth
required to feed these screens will be higher than the one we used in 2010. A 10 fold increase
in bandwidth demand both in wireline and wireless can be expected.
4k resolution will likely have the same penetration that HD had in 2010. This requires
bandwidth over 50 Mbps. Portable screen will be HD or exceed 300 dots per inch.
Progress in reflective technology will make screens usable in full daylight and the availability
of bendable screens, at a very low cost, will bring display capability to many common objects,
from table tops to walls, to some products’ labels.
Most screens will enable interactions (either directly or by coupling with a gesture or voice
recognition device). Additionally, paper thin display will change the feeling of ambient and
can provide, along with effective communications, the feel of presence.
Screens are probably the most important factor in driving the expansion of broadband in this
decade in the mass market. Along with them, software will provide new ways of displaying
complex data set, as an example in visualizing health related issues, safety concerns, the
working of enterprises and cities and so on.
Education and training will make substantial use of visualization in all fields.
 The evolution of display technologies will impact the demand of bandwidth and will
steer towards new communications architectures. This will have to be considered by
COMSOC. Many display producers will embed communications capability in their
products hence becoming a potential audience for COMSOC (it has already started).
 Education products produced by COMSOC should ride this wave. Visual and
Interactivity are the characteristics of any future education program.
4.4 The Terminals steerage
The market of terminals is already bigger, in economic terms than the market of network
equipment. Additionally, the life time of terminals is generally shorter than the one of
network equipment. The result of these two factors is that:
in this last decade the evolution of the network has been influenced by the terminals.
In this coming decade the evolution of the network will be steered by terminals.
The tipping point was the explosion of the cell phones, it has passed 4 billions at the end of
2010 and it is forecasted to approach 9 billions by 2020. Even more important in 2010 over
1.6 billion cell phones were sold and the forecast is for over 4 billions sold in 2020. The life
time of a cell phone varies greatly in different countries from as low as 6 month to 4 years.
In addition to cell phones we are starting to see the uptake of really portable screens, like the
tablets. In this decade we are going to see a multiplication of devices that interconnect with
the network on one side and to a human on the other.
in total there may be over 20 billion devices that interface human beings with the
network in 2020
There will be even more devices connected through the network (IoT, Internet of things) in
addition to sensors, already discussed in 4.1.3.
The strong innovation cycle of terminals will continue throughout this decade and by 2020 it
is expected terminals will:
❏ embed large storage capacity
❏ have a processing capacity in line or exceeding the need
❏ be able to connect to a variety of access points (adapting coding, frequency and
signaling as required)
❏ be able to create their own local network and share it with other terminals
❏ be able to single signals out of noise through cooperative processing with other
terminals in the area thus overtaking the Shannon thresholds.
Terminals are, therefore, steering the innovation in this decade and by 2020 they will be also
an integral part of any communication network.
 Terminals, their evolution and their capability have to be at the core of the COMSOC
business and all involved in terminals design are part of the COMSOC audience.
 Today COMSOC is only marginally involved in CE, Consumer Electronics; by 2020 CE
has to be an integral part of COMSOC.
 Terminals based networking is a new area that can be specifically addressed by a
COMSOC Technical Committee.
4.5 Embedded communications
Since 2005, communications have gone unnoticed inside some objects, think about Kindle, a
device that has embedded connectivity although few users may perceive it.
In 2020 many objects will embed communications to deliver their functions and in
perspective embedded communications will be taken for granted by the industry and the
public. On the one hand this is supported by new (indirect) biz models, on the other hand this
means communications will become part of the offer of several industries.
Communications is an integral part of many kinds of products. It supports some of the
functions provided by the product but it is not perceived by the user as an independent
function.
The embedding of communications capability in products morph them into services. In turns
this is going to impact the way enterprises position themselves into the value chains, will
require different expertise, including telecommunications ones, and will stimulate further use
of telecommunications.
At the same time, objects with embedded communications will be able to autonomously
communicate one another, giving rise to the Internet of Things.
The Internet of Things will represent the main sector of telecommunications in terms
of users, exceeding 100 billion objects directly or indirectly connected to the Internet
by 2020.
The embedding of communications capabilities will make it possible to reach those objects as
if they were servers thus enabling new internet services on physical objects.
The Internet with Things will represent a new way to perceive the world, opening up a
host of new services and new biz opportunities.
The embedding of communications capability will start to happen also in living things,
including human beings.
4.5.1 Transforming Products into Services
By 2020 many products are expected to:
❏ Deliver functions by connecting to networked providers (servers, cloud, other
products).
❏ Change their functionality by updating their software.
❏ Provide customer support via an embedded link to CRM systems.
❏ Be monitored and maintained from a remote location.
❏ Support a variety of service providers and related biz models.
❏ Cooperate with the environment to deliver add on functionalities.
Basically every market segment will take advantage of these capabilities, from car
manufacturing to consumer electronics, from airliners (and airlines) to drugs companies,
from agricultural products to furniture.
 The embedding of communications in products opens up a large audience to COMSOC.
This requires much more attention to vertical markets and to the engineering of the
“embedding”.
 The interface aspects are becoming very important as objects become connected and
hence can provide a wider variety of functions. COMSOC shall support this area as well.
4.5.2 The Internet of Things
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏ Have a staggering number of objects, things, connected to the Internet. There are
different estimate from as low as 50 billions to a trillion.
❏ Have sensors having the lion’s share in terms of numbers.
❏ Have most of communications consisting of tiny transactions, less than a KB a day.
❏ Have each individual thing addressable through its IPv6 address code.
Given the wide variety of communications needs required by the Internet of Things it may be
expected that specific research and new technologies will be developed, including alternative
protocols for very low power interconnection with certain sensors in the environment where
powering is not available.
However, most of the development in this area will have begun well before 2020 so it is
expected that by that time it will be “biz as usual”.
 COMSOC will have to continue to be active in this area.
4.5.3 The Internet with Things
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏ Be possible to reach a wide variety of physical things via Internet and to use Internet to
get services and information about physical things.
❏ Have many products design to offer APIs that will make it possible to connect
information and services to them, through the network (interpreted in the broad sense
defined in 4.3.3).
Whilst the Internet of Things (IoT) foresee billion of things potentially communicating with
one another, the Internet with Things (IwT) foresee a growing number (in the hundreds of
millions initially, to become hundreds of billion) of object that will become accessible to
human beings through the Internet. The IwT shares several technologies and architectures
with the IoT although the “communications interface” should be adapted to meet human
needs and the form factor of the object matters since the object is “visible” and its physical
characteristics are a selling point, as important as its functionality. In the IoT the
functionalities exposed are the ones designed by the producer of the “T”; in the IwT a
significant number of functionalities will be mashed up by third parties.
In addition, the IoT will be produced by enterprises having a specific know how in
telecommunications whilst the IwT will be produced by a variety (eventually all) of
enterprises with very little specific telecommunications knowledge.
 With the IwT COMSOC expands significantly its potential audience, since it can involve
engineers (and designers, marketers…) working in a variety of industries.
4.5.4 Human embedded communications
By 2020 it is expected to:
❏ Have proactive and personalized medicine become common, both requiring
communications between the body and monitoring centers.
❏ Have many drugs being offered as a service, rather than as a product, and hence
including monitoring and remote assistance.
❏ Have identity captured directly from the individual body, using a variety of
technologies, including embedded chips.
❏ Have BAN and PAN providing the required connectivity at body level and the
interconnection with LAN.
Significant investment is expected in this decade on connecting the body to the Internet, in
response to evolution in the genome understanding and the increase in personalization of the
cure. Also, aspects like security will stimulate the search for secure identification.
The development of disciplines like emotional computing are further pushing in a direct,
implicit communications with humans detecting some physical parameters like temperature,
sweat, heart rate and so on.
 COMSOC shall include this kind of communications among the ones it is addressing.
 Partnership with medical and biology Societies may become important in the next
decade. Ethical issues may be better considered jointly.
4.6 What does it mean to be a telecommunication expert?
Having seen the breath of communications applications in the next decade and the fact that
many industries will see communications as a core competence in their market offering,
COMSOC has to consider what will it mean to be a telecommunications expert in the next
decade?
Two major changes are underway:
Telecommunications is becoming much more than the connecting pipes and the way to
operate them. It is shifting towards a connectivity framework where data centers and
terminals are as important as the pipes (if not more). The basic knowledge required to
understand these new areas come from the computer world. New disciplines, like the
one of complex systems, semantics, autonomics are going to be central to the future
telecommunications expertise.
Most industries will require communications competences in their ranks. Since
communications will become an integral part of their products, this competence is
unlikely to be outsourced. On the other hand, the variety of industries is likely to
require a variety of competences.
The first change leads to a shift in what have been considered to be the COMSOC knowledge
boundaries. The second one brings into the COMSOC domain a new audience with new needs
and expectation.
As in the last decade most engineering curricula included economic studies, so in the next
decade most production oriented curricula (engineering, economics, computer science,..) will
include telecommunications studies.
Telecommunications engineers will continue to require today’s competences (evolved,
obviously) in the creation, operation, maintenance and expansion of the network. There will
be a stronger interest than today to extend these competences in application areas;
symmetrically, professionals operating in application areas will require to have some sort of
telecommunications competence.
 COMSOC should cater both to the needs of communications specialists and to the ones
of professionals that need an understanding of telecommunications as an ancillary
knowledge to their profession.
The pace of evolution is likely to continue at the same speed of today, which means that the
knowledge life time will continue to shrink. Engineers will need to periodically refresh their
know how to remain up to date, researchers are likely to require a constant update of their
knowledge.
The faster life cycle of knowledge threatens the value delivered by COMSOC. Alternative, more
effective ways to access knowledge and to remain abreast of discovery and innovation can dry
up researchers’ interest in COMSOC.
At the same time, the wider audience of professionals interested in telecommunications has a
longer life cycle of knowledge since the need is to keep abreast with the possible application
of telecommunications in the market, and this evolves at a lower speed than basic knowledge.
Clearly, these professionals will turn their attention to the best source available so engaging
the former (the researchers’ audience) is crucial to serve the latter.
 COMSOC shall endeavor to remain the point of reference to all researchers in the
telecommunications field and at the same time expand its audience to professionals in
other market areas. To engage researchers COMSOC should greatly improve its
timeliness, as described in 6. To serve the professionals in other market areas COMSOC
should contextualize telecommunications knowledge to their fields of interest, and
learn to speak their language. Possibly, this may require to partner with other
associations that are already serving those professional needs.
 A restructuring of TCs may be instrumental in serving the variety of constituencies and
what is known as the convergent communications industry.

4.7 Telecommunications Players
The present major source of revenues for Telecom Operators is going to shrink as
- voice services are carried out on IP,
- flat rate is generalized and slowly include the wireless connectivity,
- services will mostly be provided by Over The Top players and the competition will heat
up,
- new technology provides for even better infrastructures capacity, plenty of alternatives,
cheaper transport, thus stimulating competition on transport and access.
New players are going to have a major role in the provisioning of a composite connecting
fabric.
Telecom Operators in 2020 will be significantly different from the ones we have in
2010. They will be bigger in terms of traffic carried, leaner in terms of personnel, they
will provide multinational coverage and there will be fewer of them as result of market
consolidation.
The communications fabric will be taken for granted by the mass market and it will be
made up of several networks at the edges.
A new industry, loosely tied to Telecom Operators, will have emerged, taking care of
data management (which includes data availability at the point of use, hence data
transport where required) and of embedded connectivity.
The wireless infrastructure, and biz, will not be able in this decade to supplant the
wire-line infrastructure, although this may become possible in the following decades.
The number of services being provided by the wireless infrastructure, however, may
cannibalize a good portion of the ones being provided by the wire-line one.
It is yet to be seen if there will be a major crunch with the collapse of the wireless and
wire-line infrastructure into a single biz or if the two will remain separate. The
regulatory framework may play a significant role leading to a crunch or a divergence. A
crunch will accelerate the flattening of the network and may keep new players at bay.
On the other hand a separation may lead to a stronger consolidation in the wire line
and the entrance of new players in the wireless, particularly with the advent of soft
SIMs.
On a global scale, it may be expected that by 2020:
❏ The number of Telecom Operators will be significantly reduced, with a few main
players and a variety of local ones.
❏ The cost of technology and infrastructures required to deliver telecommunications
service will decrease both in OPEX and CAPEX. The decrease in OPEX is largely driven
by stronger automation, decrease in equipment (larger integration), shift to wireless
drops and optical loops. The decrease in CAPEX is driven by the Moore’s law and by
the saturation of the market.
❏ The number of employees in the telecommunications sector proper (today’s Telecom
Operators and Manufacturers) is going to shrink by a factor of 30% + in this decade.
❏ New players will be offering services leveraging the telecommunications fabric, based
on biz model that assume connectivity as available and free.
❏ Several parts of the edge infrastructure will be provided by independent players, with
a good portion being provided as part of the general infrastructure (smart cities,
connected malls, house with a tail).
Although some trends, as the ones listed, are visible, the big game of repositioning of 2010
Telecom Players is still far from being clear. What is clear is that the present source of
revenues for today’s Telecom Operators will continue to shrink, but it is not clear if new
revenues streams that Telecom Operators can tap will be sufficient to balance the loss or even
be able to start a new expansion such as the one enjoyed with the advent of the wireless
revolution.
There are three main areas of growth:
- embedded communications
- data centric networks
- vertical sectors re-engineering.
Along with these there are a number of possible players evolution. The jury is still out;
however, it may be important to consider the different scenarios from a COMSOC
perspectives, being aware that the future may very likely see a mixture of them.
4.7.1 Survivors (biz as usual)
By 2020 it is expected that:
❏ Some Countries will maintain their national Telecom Operator for strategic reasons.
These Operators will be heavily regulated and protected providing the essential
country wide telecommunications fabric.
❏ Some Countries will separate the basic wire-line infrastructure keeping it as a strategic
Country asset upon which other players can deliver services in a competitive scenario.
❏ Some Telecom Operators will survive through a large footprint, spanning several
Countries. Throughout this decade many markets (in developing Countries) will keep
expanding and will be able to sustain growth. M&A will characterize this decade with
several consolidations on the horizon. Notice that these consolidations are mostly
pursued to acquire new markets in areas where markets are still growing, much less to
create economy of scale that is already mostly achieved in all developed countries with
mature markets.
❏ All survivors will be leaner than today (with possible exception for those playing the
game in a protected environment), with considerable decrease of professional
engineers both because of more efficient networks and of outsourcing to
manufacturers of significant portion of the network operation.
COMSOC may expect to have a strong foot hold in these areas and to serve these Operators
nicely with the present slate of services. However, given the shrinking in size of these players
they will represent a shrinking audience for COMSOC (still a large one, however).
4.7.2 Aggressive survivors (expansion of present biz in neighboring areas)
By 2020 it is expected that:
❏ Some Telecom Operators will enter successfully into new biz, like entertainment
(television, events,…), content distribution (music, movies, books,…)
❏ Some Telecom Operators will be able to capture a good share of advertisement,
particularly in the mobile sector, activating mash ups through profiling
❏ Both of the above will not compensate for the loss of revenues from today’s offering
but will surely help in surviving.
❏ The expansion in these neighboring biz is not going to balance the loss of professionals
that will follow a trend similar to 4.7.1. There will be new professionals with a skill that
goes beyond pure telecommunications, as discussed in 4.6.
It is likely that these aggressive survivors will be found among those operating in today’s
mature markets. The “aggression” is played against established players and contrasting new
players (like Google in the case of advertisement).
It is unlikely to occur in developing markets where the focus is on the provisioning of high
margin basic telecommunications infrastructures and services (with possible exception of
India and in the second part of this decade of Brazil).
 COMSOC needs to expand its coverage to include the new areas that are being
addressed by these Telecom Operators and the manufacturers providing the
supporting equipment
4.7.3 Embedded Communications Providers
By 2020 it is expected that:
❏ Given the large presence of products with embedded communications some Telecom
Operators will specialize in this area. These Operators will be “invisible” to the mass
market and will have a B2B business model.
❏ Some Operators will create specific divisions to serve this market (including IoT and
IwT).
❏ Margins are likely to be razor thin thus pushing towards a separation of this biz from
the other (classic telecommunications biz) and at the same time it will force these
players to have a global, worldwide footprint.
These Operators will make use of very efficient networks requiring very little workforce. They
may even outsource the network operation to manufacturers.
There may be some opportunities in the management of sensors networks, management of
smart buildings, smart environment and smart cities. This can require a local foot hold and
dedicated resources.
 COMSOC has to consider this as a new audience in terms of needs and create specific
services for them.
4.7.4 Data Centric Biz Networks
By 2020 it is expected that:
❏ Data will be perceived as the crucial sector in communications. They will be addressed
both by computer rooted players and by telecommunications players.
❏ Revenues streams related to data will exceed the ones related to connectivity both at
the biz and mass market level.
❏ Today’s cloud services will expand dramatically to include data services, spanning data
management, abstraction, correlation, authentication, disclosure, encapsulation,
identity, monitoring, leverage. The Cloud will embed biz processes from manufacturing
to customer care.
❏ Web 3.0 will be the new paradigm for communications, completely masking the
connectivity aspects from the perception of the user. Contrary to the embedded
communications (that is also masking the connectivity aspects) Web 3.0 is about
connectivity, not physical one but among different data sets, more specifically, the user
data set, the object data set and the service data set.
❏ The present Apps Store will be taken over by this evolution of Data Centric Networks
and clearly the big players of today in the Apps Store area are going to be major
contestants in this new domain.
❏ There may be space both for global and local players, with local ones leveraging on the
local Information Society (Smart cities, eGovernment, Health care, transportation,
education…).
❏ The number of professionals involved in this area is likely to exceed today’s workforce
in telecommunications, particularly in the service area, that is likely to be very
fragmented.
Because of the value involved many players will try to take the upper hand. In this area there
may be both global and local (Country-wise) players. The variety of biz relations and biz
models is likely to be significant. The margins that may be expected can vary greatly from
sector to sector but in general they will compare to the ones enjoyed today in the
telecommunications biz and might be even greater in some areas.
The technologies and skill involved are different from the ones required today in
telecommunications.
 This is a most crucial area for COMSOC to be in and to attract an audience. 
 It is at the boundary between the Computer Society and COMSOC. The present
technology domain of COMSOC is not able to tackle this area, neither is the one of the
Computer Society. The reason is that there is a lot of information technology as well as
a lot of telecommunications technology. 
4.7.5 Vertical Sectors Re-engineering through telecommunications
By 2020 it is expected that:
❏ The Information Society will be in full swing. This is taking place leading to a
significant re-engineering of complete market sectors (and may actually happen
sector-wise) like education, logistics, transportation, health care, finance and banking,
production,…
❏ Some Telecom Operators will be steering this evolution, often in partnership with
major industry association, with the Government, with territory institutions.
❏ The Telecom value proposition will be in the support to new value chains (and
ecosystems)
This is a major area of change, since it will involve all our life domains and change the
industry and the society at large. It will not take place all of a sudden and it will see different
degrees of penetration in various areas.
Because of the big changes involved it will affect both industry and academia. There are
already in Europe some attempts to steer the innovation, as an example through the EIT
initiative.
 A significant increase in potential COMSOC audience derives from this implementation
of the Information Society. COMSOC should become a main player in this area.
 The type of skill involved is very large and may be better tackled through partnership
with other Societies.
 There are a lot of trials and experimentation based lessons that will need to be
captured and shared. This may require a different sort of repository from the one
existing today, based on papers production.
 There are significant social issues to be considered. Technology is but an enabler and
its application goes beyond the technical feasibility. This requires COMSOC to adopt a
more comprehensive approach and vision.
4.7.6 Take over of today’s players by new ones
By 2020 it is expected that:
❏ Some of today’s players may see their market shrunk to such a point that they will be
forced out of biz.
❏ VoIP will be widespread and a (small) number of service provider will provide
parasitic services on today’s infrastructure. This will definitely kill the voice revenues.
❏ New players, new to the telecommunications arena, like Amazon, Apple, Google
Facebook and several others that will appear in the next years, may take over
significant portions of today’s telecommunications biz, either by controlling user data
or the terminal.
❏ New players may flank the present telecommunications infrastructure with their own
resources, diverting significant portion of traffic and services on their assets. Google
already has the largest transcontinental infrastructure in terms of capacity. As the shift
towards data centric networks progresses large data centers owned by some of these
players may play a big role in the telecommunications scenario.
❏ The workforce employed by these new players is of one to two orders of magnitude
smaller than the one involved in telecommunications today. Their skill and education,
the knowledge required is also significantly different.
The change in the scenario that may result from the taking over of the telecommunications
sector by these players is so radical that one may question if a “COMSOC like” organization
still has a role.
Today there are basically no audience in COMSOC related to these players and it seems
difficult to attract them.
It is unlikely, at least for the next two decades, to see such a shift happening on a global scale
and throughout all the spectrum of telecommunications.
It is much more likely to see these new players having an increased role in
telecommunications by 2020 attracting in their orbit more service and terminals developers
rather than replacing existing infrastructure providers.
It may be very difficult for COMSOC to reposition itself to attract the new audience provided
by these new players. It may also be pointless, given the small number of their constituency.
Their evolution, however, has to be closely monitored since this will be a hot topic for the
present COMSOC audience and the extended one described in this document.
MISSION in 2020
5.
COMSOC
Academia, Industry, Government and Public – this is the “global eco-system” where the
COMSOC lives, plans its activities, provides its products and services, defines its mission, and
ultimately sees itself as serving the humanity. This global ecosystem is inhabited by other
professional societies, sometimes in competition with COMSOC, sometimes in parallel
existence, and sometimes in cooperation with us.
The convergence and globalization of the eco-system impacts COMSOC in every aspect of its
existence. As we are visioning COMSOC in 2020 we need to see how COMSOC should cope
with these megatrends of convergence and globalization, what functions it should perform, what
mission it should carry, and how it should redefine and revitalize itself in order to be a strong,
valuable and vital player in the future evolution of this converged and global ecosystem.
As a starting point to analyze COMSOC Mission 2020, let’s bring the current COMSOC
Mission. As stated in the COMSOC website:
“(a) Advancement of science, technology and applications in communications and related
disciplines;
(b) Fostering presentation and exchange of information among its members and the technical
community throughout the world, and
(c) Maintaining the highest standard of professionalism and technical competency.”
While the given mission statement is stressing important and valid components of COMSOC
mission, the dramatic changes that have already happened in the global ecosystem, and even
more, the ones that we envision would happen in the next decade, outlined in Chapters 3 and 4,
will profoundly redefine our understanding of COMSOC Mission 2020.
The major social/economic/demographic trends happening in the world are already
having a big impact on COMSOC. For example, a large proportion of our papers come from
Asia and one can expect that trend to continue as Asia continues to increase its share of,
and probably come to dominate, the world economy.
We see how in a different way 10-15 year kids tend to communicate from what even 2025 year olds have done at their age. Facebook, Twitter, texting, gaming etc. are spreading can COMSOC adapt faster and better than it has been doing? Profound changes are
happening in overall information culture worldwide, even in remote areas of our Globe.
An important continuing trend is the exchange and dissemination of information on the
web and through mobile devices. Different new two- and three-party business models are
opening access to communication and content. Different models of packaging of
information are made available for delivery to different kinds of devices. Live documents,
continuous real-time updates, community reviews, Wikipedia models are changing the
ways how data, information and knowledge are created. It is imperative that COMSOC
should remain on top on all of the developments in digital information culture in all of its
diversity of creating and exchanging of documents, music, images, videos, etc. Another
trend is consolidation of content, media processing, and communications industries,
forcing us to redefine COMSOC's scope and structures with all the attendant problems of
cultural change and conflicts with other societies.
❏ More and more information is being produced in video format. By 2015 Cisco
foresee a million minutes worth of video being consumed every second on the
Internet.
❏ Texbook are transitioning towards a fruition from the web with a forecast of over
40% being read through tablets by 2015. By 2025 education will be completely
different in terms of access to textbook.
By 2020 we can expect to have most of information residing in clouds from where
it can be accessed in a streaming modality. This is likely to change the way DRM is
being enforced.
 IEEE COMSOC need to think how to make their content available, and the model of
ownership and protection.
This section of the report of COMSOC Vision 2020 is devoted to the COMSOC Mission 2020.
We will analyze the different components of COMSOC Mission 2020 concerning its role in
serving the academia, industry, government and public. We will review different technological,
economical, industrial, marketing and social driving forces that shape the global ecosystem, and
how all of this determines the factors of redefinition and revitalization of COMSOC. Finally, we
present of our vision of COMSOC Mission 2020, and how COMSOC Mission 2010 is
transferred to the Mission 2020.
5.1 Punch line
COMSOC: The best Engineers’ Network for a Connected Earth
Community Mission
★
Provide invaluable service to our members
★
Become asset to global communications community
★
Advance and strengthen Global COMSOC –globalization of COMSOC from membership to
management
Humanitarian Mission
★
Inspires people in all countries with the courage to cultivate freedom
★
Assist people in underdeveloped or developing countries to find competitive ways of
economic development
★
Enable creative minds to create new values for human society and enhancing the quality of
life
★
Serves world and humanity
★
Embrace global culture and values
Technical Mission
★
Stimulate academic research in ICT and related sciences
★
Stimulate and document technical advancement
★
Inspire engineers’ devotion to technical progress
Industry Mission
★
Bringing COMSOC closer to Industry
★
Multi-dimensional COMSOC-industry linkage
★
Multi-dimensional Industry-COMSOC-Academia collaboration space
★
Support industry as it develops systems and deploys networks
★
Facilitates the availability of affordable services to all people in all nations
5.2 COMSOC constituency at 2020
For the purpose of this document, the COMSOC constituency is defined as people who partake
of COMSOC products and services. These people include COMSOC members, conference
attendees, publications users (print and online plus both subscribers and individual article
downloaders), end-users of education products, and certification and training customers. As
COMSOC looks at how to meet the needs of its constituency in 2020 it will need to understand
how the demographics of the markets for all (current and future) COMSOC products and
services will evolve in the next ten years. It should be noted that implications for customers of
one type of products and service may be completely different than the implications for
another type of products and services. For example, conferences typically cater more to
academics than those in industry, whereas certification and training is targeted more towards
in industry and government sectors.
Defining the estimated universe of potential members or communications related subject
matter experts can be a challenge. Based on published data, there have been about 800,000
EE BS degrees granted in the US in past 40 years. Less than half of them attained Master’s
degree or Ph.D. level. Historically about 14% enter communications-centric employment,
resulting in about 110,000 individuals with undergraduate degree and about 50,000
individuals holding an EE Master's degree or higher in the US. With 20,000 members in the
US, COMSOC member demographics imply that COMSOC has captured about 25% of the
potential US market holding Master's degrees or higher. Of those earning a Bachelor's Degree,
data would suggest that COMSOC has captured about 10% of the potential US universe. The
potential member universe could include other disciplines such as physics, mathematics,
computer science, and business management but all EE graduates do not pursues careers in
EE fields. Data sources for the international higher education area and employment markets
are unreliable and inconsistent; it is not possible to estimate realistically the global member
universe although someone may estimate the size at double the US.
The US Department of Labor maintains employment data for the telecom industry for all
employees (including non-degreed employees). Employment in the traditional
telecommunications industry has declined by 35% since reaching highs of more than 1.4
million in 2000; there have been other areas of employment growth. While telecom
employers have been shedding traditional full-time employees, technical consulting and
scientific research employment have increased by 50% in the last decade. The result is that
the US membership market is not as apparent or easily accessible as it once was.
Communications specialists can be found in a much broader array of companies and working
scenarios. Figure 1, drawn based on the US Bureau of Labor statistics charts, represents this
shift graphically.
Figure 1. US employment trends.
While those employment trends shown are for the United States, research has found that
similar shifts are also occurring globally. Additionally, this trend is expected to continue as we
move towards 2020. One factor driving this trend is that communications technology is used
more and more in other products and services (that did not traditionally utilize
communications), therefore opportunities for management and consulting will continue to
increase. As most current COMSOC members have advanced educations; postgraduate
degrees in EE, physics, mathematics, computer sciences, business or related fields. Looking
towards
2020, we
do not
expect
this to
change.
However,
as
“communications” continues to become embedded and more aspects of our lives (i.e., more
items and services will rely on communications technologies) the number of communications
users will continue to grow. While most of these users are not targets for many of COMSOC’s
core products and services, there will be an opportunity to reach out to this demographic and
offer them products and services of value (e.g., basic communication technology tutorials,
user guides to technology).
Another trend in the COMSOC constituency is that more COMSOC members are outside of
North America (as shown in Figure 2). This trend should continue towards 2020, especially as
current 3rd world countries continue to evolve and modernize their infrastructure.
Wireless build up in 3rd word countries
While this change in the makeup of COMSOC members will continue, we do not expect North
America to lose members, but rather, the growth in members in regions outside of North
America will be much higher than that in North America. As COMSOC looks to 2020 and
beyond, it will have to continue to serve members in North America and other industrial
nations around the world in addition to addressing the needs of members in these emerging
nations. In countries where COMSOC membership is currently strong, COMSOC can continue
to provide existing member products and service (in addition to new offerings), but in
emerging countries, members and customers of other COMSOC products and services will
have different needs (e.g., tutorials and training on more basic communications technologies
as opposed to conferences on theoretical aspects of communications).
Figure 2. COMSOC Membership
Another shift in COMSOC constituency that has been slowly occurring over the past ten years
is the number of women members. In 2001, only 6% of COMSOC members were women,
whereas in 2010, the percentage of women COMSOC members had increased to 10%.
[Katie]
This is a relatively large increase percentage-wise, but still far behind our goal of membership
that is 50% women. There are several efforts within the IEEE and other institutions to
increase the role of women in Electrical Engineering, e.g.
 IEEE Women in Engineering11
 Nerd Girls12
 Anita Borg Institute13
 WEPAN14
These organizations are quite effective at recruiting and retaining women engineers, but they
are not specifically geared to communications engineers. In 2009, the Women in
Communications Engineering (WICE) ad hoc committee was formed to recognize, foster and
increase the role of women in COMSOC. A more diverse COMSOC ensures a healthier society
in terms of membership and outlook on the world. To increase the diversity of our
membership, we need a two-fold approach: retain current members and encourage young
women to pursue a career in communications. Retaining membership deals with issues such
as work-life balance, career burnout and negative stereotypes. Increasing the number of
women members requires more of an outreach and education effort. COMSOC will be looking
at several possible avenues for this. One example of this is developing communications based
experiments/modules available to both high school and college educators. These would be
beneficial to the membership as a whole, but activities that feature women instructors/role
http://www.ieee.org/membership_services/membership/women/index.html
http://www.nerdgirls.org/Nerd_Girls_Site_Selection_Page.html
13 http://anitaborg.org/
14 http://www.wepan.org/
11
12
models and activities that deal with social relevance would be a way to encourage younger
women to enter the communications area.
The percentage of COMSOC members and overall constituency that are employed by academic
institutions has increased over the last decade. While the breakdown in members between
academics and industry may not change much over the next ten years, if COMSOC is successful
in targeting new products and services at industry (and government), then the percentage of
COMSOC customers (i.e., all users of COMSOC products and services) that are employed by
industry and government may increase. However, that is a trend that is hard to predict.
5.2.1 Demographic Trends
As of May 2011 the Earth population has exceeded 6.9 billion people, according to the US
Census Bureau International DB (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.php )
and it is expected to reach 8 billion by the middle of the next decade, probably reaching 7.65
billion in 2020.
❏ According to the UN estimate in 2020 there will be (in brackets the number of COMSOC
Members today):
2020
Asia:
4,596 Million
Africa:
1,276 Million
Europe:
733 Million
Latin America 646 Million
North America: 383 Million
Oceania:
40 Million
World Total: 6,672 Million
2010
4,000 Million
1,000 Million
733 Million
589 Million
352 Million
35 Million
[xxx]
[xxx]
[xxx]
[xxx]
[xxx]
[xxx]
INCLUDE DEMOGRAPHICS ON ENGINEERS AND MATCH BY REGIONS
5.2.2 Demographic impact factors on COMSOC Mission
 COMSOC will have a much greater percentage of members - and leadership - from
colleagues in China, Korea, Japan and other Asian-Pacific countries. It will shift its
headquarters from New York to Beijing, along with IEEE. A satellite office will remain in
New York City with a skeleton staff (maybe only 1 or 2 people).
Not only physical dimensions of the demographic trends play role, but we have also to take account
the qualitative factors. The future COMSOC might exercise with a federated architecture combining
several quite independent large organizations with their own headquarters. The federation itself
could be a virtual organization. Within the next decade Africa and Middle East might get organized
into separate regions.
 We may need to think more seriously about publication in Chinese. We will also have
an increasing number of non-North Americans and of women in our leadership
structure.
5.3 Segmentation of potential markets and interest
A recent study prepared by the GEANT 2020 Expert Group, within the European Commission,
emphasized a trend towards 2020 where:
“ … a direct consequence of the knowledge and learning and a framework of Open Innovation&
Lifelong learning spread through Society is the growth of micro research centers. Schools,
museums, small industries will all to different extent do and practice research”.
The decentralization of research may actually be enabled by a centralization of
resources (eg the cloud). This leads to the need for a strong, high capacity connectivity
network making it possible to achieve economy of scale, and the physical connectivity
will be supplemented by a logical connectivity at semantic level, bringing together
researchers and knowledge.
 COMSOC may provide the supporting fabric for the distributed research catering the
need to connect “minds”.
5.3.1 Critical Research and Technology Trends
While a detailed analysis of ICT research and engineering developments is discussed
elsewhere in this report (Section 4), in this section we will touch several critical trends of
these developments that are important for us to envision the COMSOC Mission in 2020.
Research and technology development have always been a major driving force for innovation
in ICT. We see that the impact of ICT research and technology will be even greater during the
next decade. Below are listed some critical trends that affect COMSOC association with ICT
and what role COMSOC may play in this association:
1) Critical research trends that affect ICT
- fundamental research on physics of computing and communication
- research on broadband and mobile communication
- research on principals of new devices, sensors, and networks
- ICT-oriented social sciences, human factors, cultural anthropology
- Semantic content processing, high-level information fusion, smart eco-systems
and smart societies
- Adaptive, self-organized networks, services, and ICT processes
- Cross-disciplinary research on socio-economic, legal, security and humanitarian
aspects of ICT
2) Critical ICT technology trends that affect ICT
- Digital Convergence
- Universal open service platforms
- Content-driven communication
- On-line and mobile services
- Advertisement-mediated business models
- Distribution and cloud computing
- green communications
- smart grid communications
- machine-to-machine communications
- application-enabled networks
3) The role of COMSOC
- mediation of ICT research and technology/industry in ICT and COMSOC
activities
- facilitating ICT knowledge eco-system: research, innovation, technology,
standardization, education, social responsibility
- engagement of academic research institutions and industry in COMSOC
activities
- educational role
- Fostering creation of ICT infrastructures for enabling open e-Science and eTechnology environments
- ICT “humanitarian missionary” role making ICT benefits known to society,
mostly in underdeveloped and developing countries, and facilitating the spread
of ICT services world-wide.
5.3.2 Research and Technology Impact on COMSOC Activities
As it is listed above we see that along with traditional “hard” communications related
research, we see the increasing importance of “soft” communications research that ultimately
should lead us to knowledge/content driven smart societies. This “soft” communications
research includes scientific disciplines of communications sociology and social sciences,
human factors, cultural anthropology, law, and artificial intelligence.
Recent study prepared by the GEANT 2020 Expert Group within the European Commission
emphasized a distributed research trend towards 2020, where:
“ … a direct consequence of spreading knowledge and learning and a framework of Open
Innovation & Lifelong Learning through society is the growth of small research centers,
including those in schools, museums, and small industries that all to different extent do and
practice research”.
In general, a distributed research environments can be implemented based on infrastructure,
platform and software services, e.g. based on IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, respectively, provided by
Cloud Computing. This leads to the need for fixed as well mobile high capacity broadband
connectivity, and logical connectivity at semantic level, bringing together researchers and
knowledge. COMSOC may provide the supporting fabric for the distributed research catering
the need to connect “minds”.
In the technology advancement side we see that communications will be "invisible" to its users, but
instant and always on. There will be a seamless integration and operation of multiple technologies.
Not only will transportation, e.g., autos on highways, be safer and have better "flow control" using
sensors and other advanced technologies, but there will also be integration into local, regional,
national and global systems. Communications on airplanes, trains, ships, etc., will be ubiquitous
(e.g., individuals will stay seamlessly connected no matter where they are). Consumer and industrial
devices will autonomously communicate with each other and "the cloud." Patient monitoring - and
control - will be an every day occurrence, reducing the cost of health care and increasing the
average life expectancy, while being less labor intensive. We will see significant advancement of
ICT in earth observation “system of systems” that play significant role in developing international
global earthquake, tsunami and other natural disaster warning systems.
On another technology development area, the content-oriented communications are becoming the
prevailing mode of communications, including online and mobile content, where the focus will be
on semantic content. In other words, the quality of ICT will be measured not by bandwidth or lost
packets, but the success of achieving business goals.
It is widely recognized that ICTs are increasingly important for economic and social development.
Indeed, today the Internet is considered as a general-purpose technology and access to broadband is
regarded as a basic infrastructure, in the same way as electricity and roads. In some countries, such
as Estonia, Finland and France, access to the Internet is a fundamental human right for their citizens
(World Telecommunication/ ICT Development Report 2010, ITU, Geneva, Switzerland, 2010).
The social networking of today (e.g., Twitter) will evolve into a "Borg-like" infrastructure. People
will hardly ever speak directly to each other (e.g., voice phone calls), but rather autonomously
communicate via a standardized social networking interface that may be implanted at birth. While
making communications "too easy" and "invisible" could be used to serve humanity, it will have
significant potential for abuse by governments, companies and others (much like atomic energy).
More controls will be needed to avoid abuse. COMSOC could play a role in defining standards for
social networking and will need to work more closely with other IEEE entities (e.g., Society on
Social Implications of Technology) to address abuse, security and other potential issues once the
"genie is out of the bottle" and we have "invisible" communications.
In the business side of communication services we see that two processes - fierce competition of
individual operators, vendors, application developers and service providers in converged
communications arena will be balanced by introduction of new innovative cost-effective and
scalable multi-party business models and eco-clusters. COMSOC should support eco-clusters in
these emerging technologies, create new TCs
and initiate new standard activities addressing the need of converged communications.
5.4 How is research going to be structured?
Despite of the proliferation of micro research center, the state of the art will continue to be
majorly influenced by traditional research centers such as Universities and large industry
research labs. These traditional centers may provide new type of research services for third
parties. COMSOC can play a major rule connecting minds as well as research service providers
and customers.
5.5 How is industry going to innovate, follow, catch up?
5.5.1 Industry Trends
Digital Convergence is the priming of underlying digital technology components and features such
as voice, texts, video, pictures, broadcasts, presentation, streaming media, global connectivity
and personalized services; the combination of all of these features and abilities from multiple
electronic systems into a simplified, converged and computer-mediated communication system to
enable individuals interact, play, communicate, collaborate and share information in many new and
different ways.
Convergence of communication, Internet, broadcasting and entertainment
Transformation
•
From feature phones to smart devices
•
From operator centric operation to user centric operation
•
From data and voice services to content services
•
From provider-controlled content business to open-market content business
•
From individual company-level competition to eco-cluster-level competition
Eco-Cluster-Based Digital Conversion in ICT Industry
Eco-cluster –diverse groups of collaborating telecom, Internet, hardware, software,
applications, content, broadcasting, entertainment, and advertisement companies that share
common business interest for serving the living, working, educational and entertainment
needs of people.
Sample companies in the eco-cluster
- Telecom Operators
- Internet Service providers
- Hardware vendors (computers, devices, networks, platforms)
- Software an applications developers
- Content providers
- Broadcasting
- Music industry
- Movie industry
- Print Media
- Advertisers
5.5.2 Industry impact Factors on COMSOC Mission
Addressing the Needs of Eco-Cluster Companies
a) Accommodate and provide services to the eco-cluster companies
b) How to expand the scope and operation of COMSOC
c) Develop new programs, products and services targeted to eco-clusters
d) COMSOC should renovate itself to conform to the new wave of communications
convergence and eco-clustering
e) Develop effective strategy for publicizing COMSOC to the converged communications
industry; specific focus to the new-comers in the eco-clusters (i.e. non-conventional
communications companies)
f) Refocus of existing industry related programs
Advances in communications and information technologies will enable a tighter integration of local,
regional and global financial, market and business transactions, thus speeding development of new
countries on the world playing field, and improving the economic condition of those in rural areas.
COMSOC will continue to serve as a framework for interactions among professionals who are
responsible for conceiving, implementing and using the technology advances that will be essential
to the new economies. It will have increased focus on financial and government enterprises, which
will be major users of the new communications and information technologies.
On economic factors, it is reasonable to consider that in addition to the traditional role that ICT
plays in integration of diverse business processes. ICT pretty much redefines the business processes
themselves making them lean, less energy consuming and self-organized (adaptive). Too large
extent this will be predicated by massive use of factory built-in sensors (sensor networks).
5.6 The labor market and the need for continuous education
Professionals will need a broad as well as deep view of the field.
Deep view of fundamentals of the field will continue to be provided by Universities. The need
for communications in other fields will be brought by industry and market which jointly with
Universities can establish new areas of penetration for communications. This scenario brings
the need for a highly diversity offer of continuous education courses ad training which will be
majorly delivered on-line. However, as history shows nothing will replace the need for face to
face Education. [NELSON]
6.
COMSOC “PRODUCTS AND SERVICES” in 2020
The profile of our potential member base will dramatically expand, as it did when web based
applications appeared and the proliferation of new applications continues to grow. The skills
needed to address these applications will go well beyond traditional engineering, and
COMSOC will be working with many disciplines outside communications to build the new
networks and applications. That will create interest in professionals who are not today within
the expected profile of a communications engineer.
COMSOC will have a much larger potential member base, and there is a need to be able
to define the criteria for the member boundaries.
New skills will be required in order to be able to develop applications together with
these people and to understand the requirements that these applications will place on
the network.
New technical committees will arise to define the applications and new roles may be
required in designing, building and maintaining these new areas.
 Because of these trends COMSOC needs to rethink its portfolio of services.
What follows is a list of products that COMSOC should consider to offer in the next decade.
Most of them are already part of the COMSOC portfolio but the way they are created and
delivered may be different ten years from now.
6.1 Conferences
Conferences will remain an important offer and source of revenues for COMSOC. The selection
of appealing locations will continue to be a major factor in attracting a large audience on site.
The target audience, however, should move from the one on site to the one attending from
remote. Tools to support remote participation should be sought.
Some keynoters and some panels should be organized through telepresence.
This should not be seen, only, as a way to attract key characters without having them to travel
all the way to the conference venue, rather as a way to delocalize the conference.
A keynote for a Conference in Florence can be given from New York, another
from Tokyo, a third from Seychelles. In New York the talk will be given from the
Renaissance on Times Square from one of its meeting rooms, where an
attendance will be present to follow the keynote live and the conference from
remote. The one in Tokyo will be given from NTT Labs and followed by a tour of
some of its labs, through remote videocast and in person by the people who met
at that site. It will be an opportunity for NTT to advertise their labs and for its
researchers to get in contact with a worldwide audience. Fujitsu and Hitachi will
be sponsoring the telepresence mashing up on the labs visits their products
information.
The keynote from the Seychelles will be part of a parallel workshop taking place
there, whose program embeds connections to follow talks given in Florence and
to be further discussed in the workshop.
 COMSOC should put in place a telepresence system to host delocalized conferences and
organize the program around this system.
COMSOC has a living roadmap of technology evolution, of applications, of markets and
industry, and all conferences are tied in to the roadmap. They are the result of the expected
evolution interest and result in an update of the roadmap.
 Conferences and workshops have to provide a statement of the consensus reached
through the presentations and discussion. They have to engage participants whose
name should be attached to the results of the conference. 
 The real driver to attend a Conference is to be an active participants and to have one’s
voice recorded in the outcome of the Conference. Attending a Conference is the way to
fulfill one’s agenda and pursue one’s goal. Passive attendance can be achieved through
remote participation.
 There should be an overall view of all Conferences being planned. All together they
form the quilt of innovation. This provides a rational for selecting topics and for
harmonization of the overall calendar. It provides a clear reference to choose to
participate, to sponsor.
The delocalization of Conferences also serve the need to “co-locate” a Conference in a venue
that is technologically (or market) attractive. The Conference planning cycle is too long to
achieve this goal, so the main Conference site, that has been decided 5 years in advance, can
be supplemented by a few other locations where the real action in the technical framework of
the conference is taking place, e.g. deployment of 5G networks. Researchers will have the
opportunity of joining at the main venue (a nice touristic spot), or at any other locations
where the real action is taking place. These are likely to be sponsored by the industry
involved in the deployment and although information will flow from these places to the main
venue via telepresence, those attending on site will have the possibility of an hands on
experience on the trials.
Conferences are a place to increase one’s understanding, know how, and extend one’s
relations. All of this should be quantified and recorded in each participant profile for later use
by the participant.
 COMSOC should provide on site social networking tools to foster, and record,
relationship and knowledge transfer.
 Being a COMSOC members should make a difference. This is where social networking
tools can help. Only COMSOC members have a COMSOC profile that can be
automatically update with relation and information pointers for later use. Part of these
profiles are COMSOC certified and can be exchanged.
Conferences are providing answers and generating new questions. The former shall be
recorded and can be used in a variety of ways. The latter should be handed over to upcoming
conferences for analyses and answers.
 Conferences have to become part of the COMSOC roadmap, one tied to the next
generating an involvement of local and remote participants. They need to be perceived
as a common work in progress where every one is expected to contribute.
Workshops are a special kind of conferences, much more focused, whose attendance (remote
as well as on site) is considered as a step forward in increasing one’s professional value. This
increase shall be certified.
 COMSOC Workshops should get a certification of value by some universities, so that
students attending that workshop can get “grades or points” that are recognized by
their university for their curricula.
6.1.1 Changes required in current COMSOC Conference Approach and Management
Conferences have traditionally been one of the principal value added services that COMSOC
provides to its members. In addition, conference revenues and surpluses have been one of
the most important contributors to the support of COMSOC as an organization with a
professional, paid, centrally-located staff function. However, the traditional, academically-
focused, hotel or conference center placed, face to face meeting model that COMSOC has
mostly followed is being challenged by a variety of factors.
Within COMSOC, the VP of Conferences has five people reporting to him/her, each responsible
for some aspect of our conference activities. These areas are Conference Operations,
Conference Development, Conference Publications, GLOBECOM/ICC Management and
Strategy (GIMS), and GLOBECOM/ICC Technical Content (GITC). We will structure this
section by each of these functional areas.
Conference Operations:
 Improved automation of processes incuding sponsorship, registration, etc.
 Integration with IEEE Membership database and other IEEE systems, when
appropriate

Conference Development
 Virtual Conferences
 Industry events
 “Instant” conferences
Conference Publications
 More automation of manuscript handling
 Rapid publication
 Continued improvement of plagiarism detection
GIMS
GIMS is responsible for the management of our two flagship conferences, GLOBECOM and the
International Conference on Communications (ICC). Our goal for 2020 is for these two
conferences to remain key venues for interaction among our members, the premier
destination for the dessemination of research and practice results, and a key financial
contributor to COMSOC’s continued viability.
Some key goals for GIMS 2020 are:
1) Adding reliable additional legs of revenue such as patronage and exhibits to the
current reliance on registration fees
2) Making our flagship conferences attractive venues for industry-oriented content and
industry participants.
3) Increasing the prestige and selectivity of current conferences
4) Adding remote access and virtual conference technology to enable new forms of
GC/ICC participation.
5) Continuing to update and enhance the GIMS handbood and decision matrix to improve
conference venue selection and day to day management
GITC
★
★
Industry Content
Hot topic symposia
6.2 Knowledge base
Although information can be expected to become even more accessible in ten years time
COMSOC can still be considered as the reference point for technical information. The 3 million
technical papers that have been downloaded through IEL in 2010, are likely to decrease as the
core of technical viewers is likely to decrease worldwide but the overall number of papers can
increase provided COMSOC enters into the areas of technology application.
 COMSOC Knowledge base should expand in coverage, to include the application of
telecommunications technologies in all market segment. 
 Semantic tools shall be provided to let a wider constituency to access the knowledge
base. This can be the actual value proposition provided by COMSOC that differentiate
COMSOC Knowledge Base from any other. COMSOC members, because of the profiling
features provided along with their membership, can have a much more refined
semantic search and delivery of knowledge, which in turns provide appeal and
stickiness.
The quality of COMSOC publication is a crucial factor in ensuring the quality of the Knowledge
Base. The present impact factor of COMSOC publications (5 Journals ranking in the top 10) is a
testimony to the relevance of this knowledge base although in ten years time a different
metric may be in place. The problem with the present metric is its validity within a closed
group of researchers whilst in the future there is a need to measure the impact of the know
how onto the application areas. Whilst researchers consider writing papers as part of their job
and curricular activity, engineers in application fields are not interested in writing papers,
rather in presenting results.
This is why it is important to bring these two constituencies together although they speak
different languages and communicate in different forms. COMSOC Conferences are the natural
place to create this bridge and have to “document” it populating the Knowledge Data base
with this information.
6.3 Lobbying Services
Various constituencies voice their needs and expectations to many regulatory bodies around
the world. As technology keeps progressing more and more choices become available and it
gets more and more difficult to make one’s case given that each potential approach has its
own supporters.
❏ COMSOC by managing the technology roadmaps, and substantiating them with
publications and Conferences presentation can be the place to mine for making one’s
case.
 COMSOC should provide yearly white papers in different areas, representing the
consensus of researchers on specific technology, that can be used off the shelf as an
objective base for lobbying.
6.4 Tutorials, Courses, Certification
❏ Technology knowledge half-life is today estimated in 5 years and this figure is going to
approach 4 years by 2020. A significant part of today COMSOC audience and an even
greater part of 2020 audience will require access to continuous education.
The crucial selling proposition is to tailor the education offer to the real necessity of each
individual. A global organization like COMSOC can achieve a sufficient market size making it
possible to create courses and targeting them to specific needs.
Although the demographics points towards a growth of professional to the expense of stable
employees it can make sense to cover both constituencies, the second by creating courses
meeting the needs of the industry, the first addressing the need of professionals.
 An up to date portfolio of courses shall be maintained by COMSOC, not necessarily all
developed in-house. An evaluation of the potential audience is required in selecting the
courses to be offered and the means to create them.
 Partnership with some university may be appropriate to create and deliver courses.
 Partnership with some Sister Societies may be useful to share courses and transfer
intellectual property. Some Sister Societies having a specific interest in education of
their membership should be involved in the construction and up keeping of the
courses portfolio.
 COMSOC members should have a preferential access to courses and the possibility to
establish a life long curricula update. As continuous education becomes a must for
some professionals COMSOC should leverage this as a point for membership value and
stickiness.
 COMSOC should endeavor to have its certifications recognized by Universities and
Industry. This ties in with point 6.7 on COMSOC University.
 COMSOC should develop courses targeted to specific industries or industry
associations and should require these industry to become Corporate Members.
Courses and tutorials should address the variety of aspects related to communications and
should differentiate from the ones being offered by Universities and education organizations
by leveraging on:
-
The breath of COMSOC visibility provided by the continuous flow of technical papers
submitted;
The variety of talks given at its conferences;
The number of volunteers that can provided direct practical experiences
Tutorials, associated to Conferences, can become an important education means and should
be framed in an overall education program. Differently from today, tutorials should not follow
a “request for tutorial presentation” but follow an education plan that obviously should
leverage on the themes addressed by the conference.
Tutorial attendance should be certified in the profile of the member and should become part
of a lifelong education program. There should be an option to take an on line exam on the
tutorial topics thus acquiring a certification of proficiency in the area.
As telecommunications becomes more and more pervasive entering into a variety of sectors
(embedded communications) , there will be a growing need to support education to
constituencies in these sectors, with courses tailored to their application area, speaking their
lingo.
 COMSOC should include in its education offer, in partnership with other education
organizations, themes that provides an understanding of telecommunications
technology, systems, evolution and applications in various sectors.
 COMSOC can support other education and training organizations active in different
sectors by providing specific modules in their courses. This has the benefit of exposing
COMSOC value to a broader audience.
6.5 On site education
Education can be delivered on site to both professionals and companies.
 Chapters represent the ideal vehicle for hosting an education event targeted to
professionals in a certain area and should be involved in its organization, that is:
-
analyzing the local needs and present an education request to COMSOC
tailoring the content and presentation to the needs of the local community
involving local leaders to generate interest and focus the content
ensuring an evaluation and a follow up
 COMSOC should develop a program for on site education to be provided to companies
that are Corporate members. The program for these on site education is discussed with
the company and becomes a part of its corporate membership.
The program can be based on a mixture of on line and on site education, with a general
outline like:
- discussion on company needs and their fulfillment through a COMSOC led education
program
- overall plan, identification of recipient target, identification of courses and delivery
methods, scheduling
- on site education program kick off, explaining tools, methods and first module
- on line courses as required
- on site closure of the program, evaluation and further steps planning
DLTs can become part of the On-site education program. Conferences may also flank the
education program with special access to trainees and focused tutorials.
 An additional education initiative can be targeted to training the trainers. This can be
done in association with a local education organization (including universitites) to
complement their education offer with COMSOC courses and access to knowledge data
base.
6.6 Membership Qualification
COMSOC (and IEEE) have changed over the years the criteria for membership coming to
accept as members basically anyone who pays the membership fee.
This is clearly providing a potential large audience that eventually benefits the whole
membership.
This policy shall be pursued also beyond 2020.
At the same time it would be beneficial to ensure that COMSOC membership can be valued as
a distinguished achievements. This can be ensured through a ranking of membership that
extends the present one (senior member – fellow).
Members can be graded based on their technical, professional proficiency as certified by a
metrics that can take into account:
- papers accepted
- talks given (invited)
- courses attended
- initiatives led
- lectures given in the COMSOC framework
- relations established (weighted)
 An ad hoc group shall take responsibility for defining the metrics and the
vertical/horizontal structure of its application.
Part of the grading can be updated automatically, part will require the evaluation by a
committee, upon presentation of the required proof of qualification by the member.
The grading will be made public and members can use it as a reference. Also, access to
COMSOC membership by third parties can be filtered by grading.
6.7 COMSOC University for Professional Engineers
The establishment of a strong education program can be leveraged to create a COMSOC
University for Professional Engineers.
On line learning will be common by 2020 and COMSOC can exploit this in its offering. A
partnership with a few universities, strategically located in various parts of the world, can
strengthen this offer. Partner Universities can provide some on site education and
certification. COMSOC can tailor some part of the education to the specific needs of
professionals, also taking into account their profile.
 COMSOC should partner with a group of Universities around the world to establish a
University for professional engineers.
6.8 COMSOC University of Communications Economics
Telecommunications will become pervasive, embedded in most ambient and products. This
will change significantly the way products will evolve and their economics.
Practical understanding of the impact of telecommunication embedding on the economics in
many market sectors will be very important. Telecommunications and processing will be
more and more overlapping within a product.
 COMSOC should enter into this area bridging the technical aspects with the economic
aspects.
 COMSOC and the Computer Society needs to team up in this area to provide education
support.
 Given the worldwide impact of embedded communications there is a need and an
opportunity to become leader in this area by establishing a University of
Communications Economics, along the lines indicated before.
As noted in 6.7, education by 2020 will benefit from distributed teaching, from worldwide
access to information and services and universities will need to reinvent themselves. The time
is right to enter into this area that will position COMSOC as the point of reference for
advanced education, riding the wave of social networks of professionals.
6.9 COMSOC MVNO
The set up of communications tools for the offering of its products can be further exploited,
and consolidated, by becoming a Virtual Operator.
The global span of COMSOC (IEEE) can set the bases for establishing a worldwide Mobile
Virtual Network operated by COMSOC.
This network can provide the services required by COMSOC conferences, education programs
and by its members.
It should also connect all Chapters offering telepresence services around the world.
A partnership with companies like CISCO and with the Computer Society may be important.
This can be fostered by COMSOC although it probably needs to be implemented at IEEE level.
 An ad hoc group should be created to provide a first blueprint to create an IEEE
operated MVNO, examining the opportunities and cost/revenues. 
7.
ROADMAP
This part will be prepared after discussion of the content of the draft document to take place
at the Opcom September meeting.
It will include also consideration on how to evolve the organization to be able to face the
demands of the COMSOC 2020.
ANNEX A: Current COMSOC membership and last ten years evolution
INSERT: Disaggregated info on male/female; industry/academia; age range; fields of interest;
services used (conferences, DLTs/DSPs, Chapters events, IEEE xPlore, Facebook,…)
ANNEX B: Current Telecommunications Scenario
ANNEX C: List of committee members
Chair:
Roberto Saracco
Members:
Celia Desmond
Doug Zuckerman
Gabe Jakobson
Mark Karol
Nelson Fonseca
Rob Fish
Russell Hsing
Sara Kate Wilson
Shri Goyal CT&M
Parag Pruthi
Stan Moyer
Vijay Bhargava
Vince Poor
Vincent Chan
Zhisheng Niu
ANNEX D: List of organizations involved
Ericsson (Ezio Zerbini)
Cambridge University (Dirk Trossen)
MIT Telecommunications Dept. (David Clark)
SWOT Analyses
Communications Society SWOT Analysis
Strengths.
• With a membership of over 40,000 global individuals, COMSOC is the second largest IEEE
society. Strong volunteer commitments, a dedicated staff, and expert operational support
have secured COMSOC’s global reputation of excellence as an organization. Excellent
reputation for conferences and publications in the scholarly arena.
• COMSOC excels at producing SciTech publications, organizing technical conferences, as well as
fostering educational programs.
• Viewed as a US-based organization outside the United States, it works to COMSOC’s advantage
that English is the predominant language used in advanced SciTech publishing.
• The technical peer review process where information is vetted prior to publication is a major
strength; especially in this new “open access” arena.
• The IEEE brand is recognized around the world as a symbol of excellence.
• COMSOC builds new and maintains existing relationships with industry. Because COMSOC’s
mission and vision is relevant to industry, there’s a natural synergy between the two. Here
are some examples:
◦
An Industry Advisory Board assists volunteers and staff in the development of products
and services for the WCET certification program.
◦
Companies use COMSOC publications as a way to sell their own products and services
through advertisements in print and online media.
• Research, patent citations, communications related standards and older practice-oriented
technical papers are other ways industry works directly with COMSOC.
Weaknesses.
• Historically, IEEE and COMSOC have not been viewed as agile or flexible. The multiple layers of
management and resulting bureaucracies result in one of COMSOC’s hardest to resolve
weaknesses. Additionally, while COMSOC excels in producing scholarly publications, the
negative stereotypes that follow are hard to change for those not invested in the scholarly
publications process. In general, COMSOC’s reputation beyond standards, publications and
conferences is marginal.
• Many competing industry organizations are attempting to fill some of COMSOC’s roles at trade
shows, within trade publications, as well as within the realm of certification and
professional development.
• Presently, COMSOC has a low profile -- not a factor -- in the business end of industry.
• Through the WCET certification program some positive industry professional development
reputation may be gained in the years to come.
• COMSOC’s lack of expertise in areas of experimentation and new product development coupled
with overextended staff / resources, and volunteer time pressure is possibly the most
difficult weakness to overcome.
• There are weaknesses in single sales support, warehousing, computing/computer report support
and interoffice bureaucratic processes. Most IEEE support is excellent.
• Retaining first year members.
• Declining US industry members.
Opportunities.
• Increasing Industry patronage is a huge opportunity for COMSOC.
• New partnerships with organizations and companies can help enhance COMSOC’s position as the
“go-to” resource for the communications industry; increasing revenue and relevance of its
products and services.
• Create new publications &/or conferences in communications areas (such as public service
communications, Internet services, security, satellite, consumer, NGN, etc.) not currently
covered is an area for future development. E-book collections. New member benefits
designed for first year members.
• New services geared to industry such as new educational offerings, EMS service, real-time
conference streaming, customized multi-day training, online sponsorships, problem solving
events, executive roundtables, or digital delivery of additional information are also amoung
the opportunities to be explored in the future.
• Integrating new technology for a global marketplace: virtual meetings; real-time access to
conference sessions/keynotes/tutorials, ieee.tv
• Increased collaboration with IEEE Operations Center departments and other IEEE Societies
• New Asian technology/education centers may lead to potential membership growth and
activities
• Social media opportunities
• Attracting non-US industry members
• Recruiting non-member authors and attendees at conferences.
Threats.
• Budget cuts due to an economy in a recession / depression hurt COMSOC businesses.
Specifically, we may see additional declines in advertising revenues, subscription sales, and
conference participation.
• Severe subscription erosion and electronic migration to open access venues
• Social media superseding traditional association communities.
• Unintended consequences of Disruptive technologies
More SWOT
Strengths:
- Technical quality
- Journals
- Professionalism
- Company agnostic
- Competitively priced products (e.g., conferences)
- Global presence
Weaknesses
- Limited value to industry
- Scope perceived as too narrow
- Limited success in attracting patronage from industry
- Not easy to nimbly expand into timely products and services (IEEE bureaucracy and too many
rules and regulations)
- Don't always do enough to nurture young engineers, women and other minorities
Opportunities
- Be first to cover new and emerging technologies and applications in our
conference/publication/education/standards infrastructure
- Collaborate and even consider merging with relevant IEEE and non-IEEE societies to
strengthen our position
- Colocate conferences and copublish periodicals with established entities that already cover
industry and other segments for which we seek growth
Threats
- Open Access paradigm reduces need for COMSOC delivery platform for its publications and
other technical information
- Colleagues are joining ACM, which is much less expensive than IEEE plus COMSOC
- Conferences and publications offered by commercial and other non-profit organizations