Sustainability, Vol. 12, Pages 2904: Modeling the Adoption and Diffusion of Mobile Telecommunications Technologies in Iran: A Computational Approach Based on Agent-Based Modeling and Social Network Theory (Sustainability)

Understanding the mechanism underlying the mobile telecommunications technologies (MTTs) diffusion in a country is crucial for telecom planners to know how to accelerate their diffusion by designing appropriate scenarios. Considering the technology diffusion as a bottom-up process, this study is aimed at exploring this mechanism, drawing on insights from diffusion of innovation theory and social network theory. Accordingly, an agent-based model is proposed to investigate how MTTs are diffused in Iran over time. The results of this study show, (1) social network of Iranian society seems more similar to a Watts–Strogatz small-world network than a Barabási–Albert preferential attachment network, where the clustering coefficient is high and average path length is low, (2) compared to the compatibility parameter, the advertisement parameter not only is less influential on diffusion of a targeted MTT (i.e., 4G) but also is not necessary for it, and (3) scenarios having the least number of steps and turning points are more appropriate for continuous diffusion of 4G. The proposed study is empirically validated against real-world data ranging from 7/1/2017 to 12/31/2017. We believe it provides telecom planners insights regarding MTTs diffusion mechanism in a social complex structure and the how of scenario designing for increasing their diffusion.