The emergence of new wireless technologies, such as the Internet of Things, allows digitalizing new and diverse urban activities. Thus, wireless traffic grows in volume and complexity, making prediction, investment planning, and regulation increasingly difficult. This article characterizes urban wireless traffic evolution, supporting operators to drive mobile network evolution and policymakers to increase national and local competitiveness. We propose a holistic method that widens previous research scope, including new devices and the effect of policy from multiple government levels. We provide an analytical formulation that combines existing complementary methods on traffic evolution research and diverse data sources. Results for a centric area of Helsinki during 2020-2030 indicate that daily volumes increase, albeit a surprisingly large part of the traffic continues to be generated by smartphones. Machine traffic gains importance, driven by surveillance video cameras and connected cars. While camera traffic is sensitive to law enforcement policies and data regulation, car traffic is less affected by transport electrification policy. High-priority traffic remains small, even under encouraging autonomous vehicle policies. We suggest that 5G small cells might be needed around 2025, albeit the utilization of novel radio technology and additional mid-band spectrum could delay this need until 2029. We argue that mobile network operators inevitably need to cooperate in constructing a single, shared small cell network to mitigate the high deployment costs of massively deploying small cells. We also provide guidance to local and national policymakers for IoT-enabled competitive gains via the mitigation of five bottlenecks. For example, local monopolies for mmWave connectivity should be facilitated on space-limited urban furniture or risk an eventual capacity crunch, slowing down digitalization.

翻译：物联网等新无线技术的出现，使得新兴多样化城市活动得以数字化。因此，无线流量在规模和复杂性上持续增长，导致预测、投资规划与监管日益困难。本文刻画了城市无线流量的演化特征，旨在支持运营商推进移动网络演进，并助力政策制定者提升国家与地方竞争力。我们提出了一种综合性方法，拓展了先前研究范围，涵盖了新设备以及多层级政府政策的影响。本文给出了融合现有流量演化研究互补方法及多源数据的分析框架。针对赫尔辛基中心区域2020-2030年的估算结果表明：日均流量持续增长，但智能手机仍贡献了出乎意料的大比例流量。机器流量比重逐渐上升，主要驱动力来自安防监控摄像头与联网汽车。其中，摄像头流量对执法政策与数据监管较为敏感，而汽车流量受交通电气化政策影响较小。即使在激励自动驾驶政策背景下，高优先级流量仍保持较低占比。研究表明，5G小基站或将在2025年前后出现需求，但新型无线电技术及额外中频频谱的部署可将这一需求推迟至2029年。我们认为移动网络运营商必须合作建设统一的共享小基站网络，以缓解大规模部署带来的高成本。此外，本文还为地方及国家政策制定者提供了通过化解五大瓶颈实现物联网驱动竞争力提升的指导建议。例如，在空间受限的城市公共设施上应推动毫米波连接的本地垄断模式，否则将面临最终容量瓶颈，从而延缓数字化进程。