from This will be 11 Department
Fifth-generation wireless (5G) was supposed to change the world. According to wireless carriers and equipment manufacturers, 5G would bring about the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” as well as give birth to amazing new smart cities and help treat cancer. Wireless industry giants regularly envisioned a world filled with 5G-enabled robots giving you tattoos and performing remote banana surgery (?).
In the real world, 5G has failed: While it did offer faster, lower-latency connections, it has been more of a modest evolution than a revolution, and the current state of the US telecommunications industry (highly consolidated, largely uncompetitive, poorly regulated and inconsistent) means that most 5G services in the US are slower and significantly more expensive than most European services.
The wireless industry is currently starting to develop the 6G standard. 6G, like 5G before it, will expand into less used spectrum segments while improving network performance and speeds and integrating some interesting network automation techniques. Interoperability and the integration of new automation techniques will be more important than the development of new hardware transmission techniques.
It’s not clear if the wireless industry has learned anything from the backlash against 5G hype. Ericsson, for example, has proclaimed that 6G will enable an “internet of senses” and allow consumers to “digitally navigate” the world. Samsung claims that 6G will enable “hyperconnected AI experiences,” though it’s unclear what that means.
With 5G investments all but collapsing, we’re seeing at least some in the wireless industry toned down this shit a bit. Even AT&T executives echo my words that these standards are evolutionary, not revolutionary. And yet, it’s pretty common to hear wireless executives claim that 6G will enable things like “indoor service robots” and “augmented reality experiences.”
“Young said 6G could support a range of new applications and services, including indoor service robots, augmented reality experiences and digital twins for hazardous environments.”
Corporate jargon is inherently meaningless, but these kinds of wild predictions are always particularly entertaining, not just because these inventions often aren’t reality, but because they don’t even require 6G in the first place: Most of the innovative use cases the industry envisions for 5G and 6G would work just as well with a gigabit Wi-Fi connection.
Cancer treatment in a hospital probably won’t even involve cell phones; there’s no reason why a tattoo artist far away can’t use a regular ethernet port. I’ve always found the rhetoric very amusing: a sense of desperation that hides an interesting fact.
The reality is that over-promising comes at a cost: over-promising about the capabilities of this type of technology will associate the term in consumers’ minds with mindless advertising rather than innovation and practicality.
Another problem is that consumers aren’t willing to pay more for 5G. U.S. wireless data is already some of the most expensive in the developed world due to industry consolidation, and every consumer survey shows that what U.S. consumers want most is lower prices.
Efforts to make 5G even more expensive haven’t worked. Verizon was forced to backtrack on a plan to charge $10 extra for 5G because no one wanted to pay it. AT&T is now trying to charge $7 extra for “Turbo 5G,” but I expect this will have much the same effect.
Given the problems of competition, integration, and regulatory capture in U.S. wireless communications, the “race to 5G” has been something of a dead-end road all along. And with everyone from France to China offering wider 5G coverage at significantly less cost, it’s not a race we’ve actually won on any meaningful basis. This is not something the staunchly patriotic U.S. tech press typically wants to discuss.
I hope the 6G hype cycle won’t be as bad as the 5G hype cycle. But most of the financial incentives tend to exaggerate the capabilities of the technology in the press and in policy. Reliable, fast networks are not sexy and don’t get attention. So I think the “AI” hype and 6G hype will merge and mutate in a whole new way that is at least amusing in its absurdity.
Categories: 5G, 6G, AI, hype, robots, wireless
