تاثیر فناوری رادیویی شناختی بر شبکه های سازمان های بین المللی شبکه های تلفن همراه و مدل های کسب و کار  The impact of cognitive radio technology on mobile network operators’ interorganizational networks and  business models

1. Introduction Structural changes in the information and communication technology (ICT) industry, such as convergence, enable current telecommunication players to expand their roles (Li and Whalley, 2002). They also mark the entry of powerful new players from IT and media industries which are altering their value chains and business models. These are key issues for networks’ operators. Firms are moving up the value chain to higher margin activities through both vertical integration and horizontal concentration, establishing numerous partnerships and cross investments (Zhang and Liang, 2011). New innovation leads to higher complexity to the telecommunication business with new players entering the game and ‘old’ ones changing their roles and positions in the value chain (Christensen, 1997; Gronsund, 2013; Medeisis and Minervini, 2013). This paper deals with potential disruptive technology expected to introduce many changes in the mobile telecommunication business that is “Cognitive Radio” (CR) networking (Nekovee, 2009; Ahokangas, Matinmikko, Myllykoski, and Okkonen, 2012). Radio spectrum, classically allocated to different industries (broadcast, military, mobile communications, etc.) in a licensed manner, can be reused by secondary applications license-free. This removes the most important entry barrier of the mobile telecommunication market, the spectrum licenses, and allows new actors to enter it and ‘old’ actors to expand their roles to new services. This is expected to bring new relationships. Regarding the fact that CR introduces new ways for building and operating wireless networks that may be radically different from the classical way, many researchers argued that “CR is the potential game changer of the entire wireless industry”, leading to a loss-loss situation for incumbent providers that is one of the reasons that stall the introduction of CR technology (Medeisis and Minervini, 2013). The objective of this paper is to give more insight to the position of network operators with respect to CR technology. This article analyses two research questions. The first question is about the possibility for the emergence of a new platform related to CR, especially with the role of Internet Giants like Microsoft and Google that are expected to create and manage a database for spectrum access. The second research question is about the disruptive nature of CR technology. Indeed, many papers made the disruptiveness assumption based on the fact that a rare and expensive resource that is the spectrum may become cheap and available to everybody (Barrie, Delaere, Anker, and Ballon, 2012; Nekovee, 2010). However, defining the nature of the innovation related to CR, i.e. disruptive or sustaining, as defined by Christensen (1997), is a difficult research question. According to Gronsund (2013), “it is often stated that CR is a disruptive technology. However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, there does not exist any detailed studies using disruptive innovation theory to analyze the disruptive potential of CR”. We address this question based on the analysis of the business environment changes and in the light of the strategies of the main actors.