Impact Analysis of Telecommunications Technology Based on Usage Scenarios: The Case of 5G Low-Latency Technology in V2X

The telecommunications sector has experienced enormous advances with technological evolution, and various alternatives for technology development toward 5G technologies have been proposed. To achieve effective research and development (R&D) management, these alternatives should be evaluated. Although cost–benefit analysis, which can help facilitate a technology with the most benefits and the least costs, is generally applied, technology related to public goods should consider both market and nonmarket perspectives. Since many telecommunications technologies have social impacts as well as market profitability, e.g., 5G, the economic feasibility analysis of such technologies needs to apply market and nonmarket approaches. Therefore, this paper presents an R&D impact analysis based on particular usage scenarios that reflect the characteristics of a telecommunications technology. We investigate how the target technology will be employed in a product or service, what costs and benefits the technology will produce, and what methods can be used to measure the costs and benefits. First, scenarios are constructed to identify different types of benefits while avoiding overlaps between them. Detailed guidelines are developed to link the most appropriate methods among various economic-feasibility analyses to assess costs and benefits for each usage scenario. Then, the proposed framework is applied to the case of 5G low-latency technology used in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) and validated. The case study findings indicate that the framework is useful in converting the direct and indirect benefits of telecommunications technology into a single economic value and is thus expected to be employed in technology evaluation.