While AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile squabble over each other’s claims of 5G dominance and their theories of 5G Evolution, it’s a good time to pause and reflect on how nothing changes in the mobile business. They had the same fights over 4G and they will do it all over again when 6G arrives.
Yes, 6G.
Expect to hear more about it in the not too distant future. 6G is undefined now, but there’s an assumption that it will be developed over the next 10 years, and that it will be something like total immersion in a sea of data.
FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel talked about 6G at the Mobile World Congress show in Los Angeles a couple of years ago – the first time I heard someone try to define it. She described it as continual network densification. Samsung calls it “hyper-connectivity involving humans and everything”.
5G technology is all about network densification at the city block and factory floor level. 6G will be about densifying networks at a personal level.
6G development is likely to take the diverse development path that 4G took, rather than the internationally coordinated standards setting process that led to 5G. It’ll be developed by bits and pieces over the next ten years, and then eventually bundled into a package with a 6G label on it. As with other technologies, initial attempts might be for military applications. Technology that allows troops, equipment and weapons to be continually and comprehensively linked to AI-class analysis, command and control would be a game changer.
It’s not simple connectivity, of any generation, that’ll make the difference. Superiority – military or economic – will be gained or lost on the basis of the applications, data and devices that use it. 5G’s potential has barely been tapped and there’s a lot of work that has to be done before it runs out of steam.
But, ya know, 5G is so 2020.