With Apple’s recent listing of cellular platform architects to work on 6G technology, those wondering why Apple is already hiring for 6G when the 5G house isn’t in place yet. I frowned. This is why we are looking so far ahead.
iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max
There are signals suggesting that Apple could end its partnership with Qualcomm within the next few years once it has its own modem chip for use in the iPhone. The company’s current semiconductor efforts may be focused on 5G engineering, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need plans for 6G. In fact, Apple has been hiring 6G engineers for some time.
The answer to all of this lies in how the communications business works.
Telecom 10-year cycle explained
Broadly speaking, the telecommunications industry plans generations of new technology in 10-year increments. This does not mean that mobile phone service providers will discontinue new generation phone technology within that period. But they have been introducing new generation technologies like this for decades.
Mobile networks are a huge global business. Making this technology work means hundreds of billions of dollars invested in physical infrastructure, from antenna towers to network operations centers to the staff who run and repair the machines that make the technology work.
That ecosystem spans the network, the handsets that operate on it, and the many other devices that connect to the mobile network (industrial machinery, medical equipment, vehicles, IoT gadgets of all kinds).
Mobile networks have become essential infrastructure around the world and a national security issue for governments. Not just public commercial networks. There are private networks used by businesses, and private networks used by governments and military agencies.
Therefore, having some kind of comprehensive plan for introducing new technology will give all industry players a common goal to work toward as technology continues to evolve, and a common goal to reach when building networks. goals are obtained.
Behind the Curtain: 3GPP
Currently, the development of new generations of mobile phone technology is coordinated through a standards body anachronistically called the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The group was formed in the late 1990s, uniting seven different international telecommunications standards development organizations with the goal of creating a unified standard for the worldwide deployment of 3G mobile communications, and its momentum continues to this day. It has been taken over.
Currently, 3GPP is creating specifications that cover the basics and details of mobile technology. The specifications describe how the core network operates, the chips used in handsets, and the radio access networks that connect them. 3GPP maintains a roadmap for the development and deployment of these new capabilities.
Approximately every 10 years, 3GPP and other major players in mobile communications introduce a new generation of technology. For example, 3G networks were first put into practice in the early 2000s. 4G networks first appeared in 2009, and 5G networks started lighting up in 2018.
Mobile network operators periodically “sunset” their networks in order to reuse radio frequency bandwidth allocated to new systems. This happened in the US in 2022. That’s because carriers have shut down their 3G networks to make way for improved 5G coverage.
As a result, a new generation of mobile services emerges approximately every 10 years. And they remain for decades. Ultimately, it will be replaced by technology already in place in the field.
Beyond 5G
5G advancement continues under the aegis of 3GPP. Since 2017, the standards group has introduced his four major releases of new 5G specifications. We are currently at release 18 (known in the telecom industry as 3GPP R18), with R19 expected to be released in 2024.
These latest specifications are called “5G Advanced” and offer improvements in service continuity, reliability, speed, and reduced latency. Many of these changes aim to improve the quality of the existing 5G service, but they are also the basis for the upcoming 6G, which aims to be up to 100 times faster than 5G.
The round trip time from specification publication to implementation is measured in years. A practical example that you may be familiar with is the iPhone 14’s “Emergency SOS by Satellite” feature.
Apple helped GlobalStar build a worldwide network of ground stations.
The roots of this technology first coalesced with the publication of 3GPP specifications in early 2020, authorizing the use of band n53 for satellite-to-phone communications. It will be another year before Qualcomm releases a chip that supports this specification, and another year and a half before Apple releases the iPhone 14.
In the meantime, a lot of work has gone into building a worldwide relay network, including a ton of engineering from Apple, and the company’s significant investment and collaboration with satellite communications company GlobalStar.
But with a nearly three-year timeline in mind, it’s understandable why Apple would hire 6G talent now, even though the 6G specification is still in development. The debate surrounding 6G has already been going on in the telecom industry for years, and the cycle continues.
In fact, Apple joined the conversation almost as soon as 5G arrived as a founding member of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), along with Google, VMWare, Cisco, and others.
In a business like communications, nothing happens overnight. Apple is wisely building up its engineering presence to get the most out of the technology to get there.
