Carriers seem determined to make the same mistakes with 6G as they did with 5G
6G’s raison d'être is in industrial applications, not connecting cellphones
Industry 4.0 will be an “everything, everywhere, all at once” shift
Work on 6G is now well underway, but industry reactions to the forthcoming GSMA mobile standard have ranged from negative (among carriers) to clueless (from trade journalists and analysts). These responses stem from a fundamental failure to grasp the killer application that will define 6G when it arrives around 2030 as a technology equally essential to the future of the world as artificial intelligence (AI).
To wit, 6G will provide the essential infrastructure for the new Industry 4.0 industrial revolution, which is poised to transform the global economy and has the potential to invert the current competitive landscape among companies and nations.
Digital industrialization requires a fast and secure network. However, it also needs a network that can scale to accommodate a staggering number of increasingly tiny IoT devices. (Today, IoT equipment can be as small as an electrical smart meter or as large as a port crane. By the mid-2030s, most IoT hardware is expected to be smaller than a sugar cube, down to microbot form factors.)
Currently, there are around 20 billion of these IoT devices worldwide. By the end of the decade, this number is projected to increase to between 50 billion and over 100 billion.
That’s just the beginning. As every industry and business in the world is drawn into the global digital industrial vortex, the IoT growth curve begins to resemble not merely a hockey stick but a hockey stick taped to a rocket ship — with the worldwide number of IoT devices likely reaching a trillion at some point between 2035 and 2040, in my estimation.
5G can’t handle those numbers, but 6G can — supporting up to 10 million IoT devices per square kilometer, 10 times more than 5G. It also boasts several other features, including integrated AI, that outfit it to serve in the new industrial world.
Carriers have yet to comprehend the significance of the shift to industrial digitalization or 6G’s role in it. Instead, they continue to overly focus their strategies on profiting from consumer services.
“The [6G] capital investments must be logical," said AT&T technology EVP Chris Sambar. “We need to have a clear line of sight to the consumer use cases."
This thinking misses the point and echoes the mistakes carriers made regarding 5G. They believed it would enhance consumer revenue by boosting network speed. However, that was not the primary purpose of the crucial aspects of 5G, and consumer service is even less of a priority within the 6G standard.
Digital industrialization represents an “everything, everywhere, all at once” shift — with a revenue opportunity to match. Companies like AT&T and T-Mobile will miss out unless they recognize its impact and start planning for it now.
Will they do so? It’s not looking good. It is more likely their fixation on the consumer market will relegate these companies to footnotes in the history of communications.
Op-eds from industry experts, analysts or our editorial staff are opinion pieces that do not represent the opinions of Fierce Network.