Forecasting in telecommunications and ICT—A review

Given the length of time that has elapsed since the IJF Special Issue on Telecommunications Forecasting in 2002 and our reliance on information and communications technology (ICT), it is now appropriate to review the flow of benefits from forecasting to ICT and from ICT to forecasting. The importance of ICT is demonstrated by its accounting for 8.2% of the value added and for over 20% of employment in the OECD countries. The literature reviewed is categorised by both the ICT area of application and the modelling approach. The ICT application areas are: mobile telephony, internet usage or provision, and other ICT related products and services. The main modelling and forecasting approaches are diffusion modelling and forecasting, time series forecasting and technological forecasting, and this review devotes a section to each of these approaches. Most of the research activity in the field (measured by numbers of papers) has occurred in the modelling of diffusion in ICT, particularly mobile telephony, producing beneficial cross-fertilisation between forecasting and ICT applications; examples are multi-generational modelling and choice modelling. Although call centre manpower planning has led to innovative forecasting models, other analyses of clusters of ICT time series data sets have been less innovative. Technological forecasting papers tend to be exercises based on expert opinion.