By Antonio Nicita
“It’s all about data,” wrote Chris Chapman, president of the IIC, in Intermedia this year. And every day passed in the digital ecosystem shows how true this is for the future of communications. According to the IDC Data Age 2025 forecast, in the next 6 years the volume of data created in the “datasphere” is expected to increase by five times. Beside volume, two other two v’s – velocity and variety – will shape the nature of the datasphere in the near future, changing the nature of products and services exchanged in the digital ecosystem as well as the structure of digital markets, raising new trade-offs and dilemmas for regulators and policymakers. As the digital ecosystem becomes fundamentally driven by datasphere growth, traditional value chains and vertical organisations in the communications industry will be rapidly transformed. Their role will be redesigned in terms of producer and/or recipient of data, while algorithm-driven platforms will take centre stage, with data exchange at the core of economic transactions involving multisided markets.
DownloadBig data, the driving force of platforms, is raising fundamental – and puzzling – issues about our current view of free market capitalism, as ANTONIO NICITA writes.
- Intermedia Issue:
- Volume 46, Issue 03
- Issue Date:
- October 2018
Antonio Nicita (Prof)
Professor of Economic Policy, Lumsa University and Member of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, European Commission 
