As the hype from the last upgrade in mobile connectivity dies down, the telecommunications industry is preparing for the next big thing.
This time it’s confident 6G will deliver what was promised by 5G but largely not delivered.
That prior leap did bring faster speeds to mobile devices, and it enabled businesses to onboard new technological capabilities that the old networks couldn’t quite handle. The generative AI revolution, smart manufacturing capabilities, smart-home and smart-city innovations, among others, would have been more difficult or not possible without the jump to 5G.
The technology did not dramatically change our relationship with the digital or physical worlds, nor did it enable new industries and business models, autonomous vehicles and machines, or extend Internet connectivity to the expected extent.
“All of those magical new services that were promised that would radically change how we perceive wireless access and services in the first place have largely failed to come to fruition,” says London, Ont.-based technology analyst Carmi Levy. “Things like vehicle-to-vehicle communication, next generation wearables, low power devices — we really haven’t captured those.”
Industry experts point to numerous unforeseen challenges that prevented 5G from reaching its full potential, and they remain confident 6G can deliver on those promises, and more. They point out that the next generation of mobile connectivity is expected to deliver more than higher speeds, leading to new sensing, AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, digital twin, and smart-device capabilities.
“In principle, the technology is ready, but the market is not yet there, and there are reasons for that,” says Professor Matti Latva-aho, director of 6G Flagship at the University of Oulu in Finland, the world’s first 6G research program. “Because of COVID, mobile network operators made heavy investments to improve the mobile broadband networks, but they ran out of cash.”
Instead of making investments in mobile service, providers shifted their financial focus to improving home Internet speeds, and they didn’t have enough left over to enable the improvements expected from 5G. It also made accessing chips and other hardware necessary to enable those capabilities more expensive and difficult to acquire during the supply chain disruption that resulted from the pandemic.
That is likely to change in the transition to 6G, which Prof. Latva-aho says could happen toward the end of the decade or in the early part of 2030. While 5G required an investment in physical infrastructure, it’s too early to say what that might look like for 6G. The industry has yet to come up with standards or develop the necessary equipment, and most of the work has been on the software side.
Still, the global telecom industry is already working to ensure the capabilities it promises are aligned with economic realities.
Those capabilities, according to Prof. Latva-aho, include more precise wireless positioning, greater AI integration, higher speeds in more remote areas, and more secure, reliable and resilient global networks.
“When we talk about 6G’s grand goals, we are talking about massive digital twinning, where you can build a digital version of very complicated industrial processes, feed it real-time parameters and learn how it behaves, so you can play with it in the digital world,” he says. “The end-user equipment will be totally different. We won’t be limited to a smartphone. It can be almost anything.”
The industry is also actively seeking input from businesses in hopes of better aligning the capabilities of mobile providers with real needs and use-cases.
“One thing we’re really trying to do is take a market-first approach,” says Jaydee Griffith, managing director of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions’ (ATIS) Next G Alliance.
In short: A reason we might not have 6G already is because there hasn’t been a compelling enough need for it.
ATIS works with industry partners — including Bell and Telus in Canada — to set global telecommunications standards and priorities, and Mr. Griffith says the industry is keen to hear from business leaders about what they’re hoping to get out of the next generation of mobile connectivity.
“We can’t sell a service businesses don’t really need,” he says. “Talk to your telecom provider, talk to your trade associations, so we can ensure that our members understand what needs to happen to drive this forward.”
Mr. Griffith adds the industry is eager to hear from business owners in Canada, whose perspectives can directly shape the development of 6G technology in this early phase of its development.
Getting a strong grasp on business processes and opportunities for technology to improve them is also the recommended approach to technological adoption more broadly, Mr. Levy says.
“Any business of any size that wants to be successful in any sector really needs to have a solid understanding of how their business processes map out,” he explains. “Once you have that situational awareness, you’re in a much better position to ensure that that aligns with technologies available in the marketplace as those technologies continue to evolve, rather than buying technology just for the sake of it.”
