The data, generated by users, companies and governments, added to the latent deployment of 5G, are already considered as a fundamental input of any economic process. But the conventional approach to measuring the economic activity of a given country is not adapted to calculate the business volume generated by the so-called Data Economy.
According to the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), by 2020 data traffic to and from Data Centers will exceed 15 zettabytes. In the United States, it is estimated that the IoT and data analytics could add US$2.2 billion to the GDP of its economy in 2025. For the Asia-Pacific region (APAC), it is estimated that by 2121 the digital transformation will contribute to GDP U$S1 trillion.
Traditional economic measures, such as the one applied to GDP, fail to keep pace with accelerated technological development, said Diego Vizcaíno, managing partner of the area of ??Applied Economics of International Financial Analysts (IFA), in dialogue with Convergencialatina.
The key is to transcend the limitations of traditional measurement systems, which are now in question. But still, says Vizcaíno, an international consensus was not reached on what is the best method to accurately measure reality.
In any case, it does not mean that there are specific examples of the value generated by this information, especially when measuring the weight in the stock market of companies that use data as the main benefit (Facebook, Amazon).
Álvaro Ortiz, Chief Economist of China, Turkey and Big Data at BBVA Research, agrees that unstructured data have no value and that their weight lies in efficiency gains. More than as a mere factor of production, it lies in the potential increase in productivity and efficiency. The statistics that were received with some delay, are now delivered in real time and this facilitates speeding up the time to market of the products.
The telco sector's vision of the potential value of the data is summarized in recent statements by José María Álvarez-Pallete, CEO of Telefónica, in the latest edition of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. "The OTTs say that data is the raw material to obtain insights for businesses and governments. Data boost information factories and for some they are equivalent to capital. People give them in exchange for free services. Data is an infinite resource according to this way of thinking, and the value lies in the algorithm. We do not agree with this", he said last February.
Álvarez-Pallete called to discuss data as a new factor of production, which deserves to be included in the GDP of each country. "Data is like dignity. They have their own value. They can not be expropriated". Based on this, he demanded a digital rights law, which establishes how data should be used, the rights of users and if they are in control of the exchange of value for their data.
In line with this, Telefónica and other operators such as Deutsche Telekom and Orange are part of Data Portability Cooperation, an initiative led by the GSMA that works on the definition of a common data portability standard that facilitates users to take their data, following what is established in the new European Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).