Privacy and Economics in a 5G Environment

5G network technologies are generally expected to empower wireless communications to enable communication for anybody; of anything and anywhere, i.e. to finally fulfil the mobility promises made since the 2G introduction in the early 1990's. A generally accepted technology vision is that new services and applications especially related to social networking, and machine-to-machine communications will be accelerated, underlining the shift to a more user centric application-driven connectivity, transparently deployed over various technologies and infrastructures by users and devices. A key challenge for realizing the vision is, however, "How will the technology system handle user data?" For the user centric and data centric 5G technologies to be accepted and function as a viable business model, user trust in their data privacy is paramount. Today personal data have become an economic asset belonging to the service providers whose business case often includes and is dependent on the use and selling of such data. The aim of the paper is to discuss user privacy concerns in today's and tomorrow's information society with a focus on economic aspects. The paper will further discuss the 'privacy economy' that will enable new business models focused on the economic value of private data.