Telecommunications has been promoting fifth generation (5G) wireless networks for so long that it looks like they will stay in place for years to come. But it won’t. Or in fact, almost not, since some equipment manufacturers are already preparing the arrival of what will succeed them: 6G. It is said to be “more human and responsible”. Who wants to believe in the virtues of 6G?
Considering how 5G has been received by part of the public, the more cynical are sure to place a well-felt pun about 6G here. Will supplier towers be installed directly on the roofs of primary schools? Will a 6G chip be inserted in a possible fourth dose of vaccine? Will there be a red MAGA cap lined with a thin metallic layer powerful enough to block waves that will no doubt control people’s brains?
None of that, of course. But because this technology will emerge in a world where telecommunications rhyme with misunderstanding and disinformation, equipment manufacturers feel the need to better prepare the ground this time around. So much so that, even if the activation of the first public 6G networks is planned somewhere at the end of the decade, it is at this moment that the decision is made on what its main characteristics will be.
More sustainable networks?
“5G networks are not yet fully functional, but already, in our laboratories, we are developing what will become 6G in a few years”, adds Kaniz Mahdi, vice president responsible for peripheral technology for the American company VMware.
According to what the American expert tells us, 6G technology will essentially be made up of the “applications” that have been promised by 5G: artificial intelligence personalized according to the user, faster and more versatile cloud services and decent computing power. of a supercomputer accessible from inexpensive telephones.
Basically: 5G will not be “replaced” by new technology. It will be “improved”, explains Kaniz Mahdi. “5G networks were a revolution on the infrastructure side. Wireless has been elevated to the level of high-speed wired networks. With 6G, we will focus on user services: applications, automation and personalization. “
The main big news on the hardware side will be the activation of what the industry calls edge computing. Supercomputer servers will be integrated directly into the antennas throughout the network. It’s as if the huge data centers that tech giants have built in very specific regions of the continent are suddenly fragmented and spread across the entire mobile network.
By distributing computing power in this way, 6G networks promise to offer an equal quality of service everywhere in the country, including in somewhat more remote regions. Peripheral computing is this small revolution in connected industrial objects that promises to automate agricultural production across the province to increase the yield of farms of all sizes.
This ambitious promise is the same one made in health with telemedicine, in education with cutting-edge university research and in entertainment with the metaverse. Yes, that same metaverse that Facebook (now Meta), Microsoft, Apple and Google are seeing in their soup these days.
The trap of rushed marketing
If all this sounds like something already heard, it is because it has already been said … to extol the merits of 5G networks. And if we replay the same refrain, it is because the telecommunications sector is sometimes a little too eager to talk about what is to come. This is also partly why we are talking about 6G almost ten years in advance!
Switching to 5G has required outsized investments for suppliers. Anxious to make this expense profitable as quickly as possible, they made all the noise they could to get the new technology adopted. However, for the average user, this technology is not really revolutionary: the data loading may be a little faster, but that’s about it.
It must be said that the wireless technology currently in use in Canada is only 5G in name. It is a bit unfortunate for the telecommunications giants to be so eager for the next big technology to arrive that they will include in its name the intermediate technologies that prepare the market for its arrival. The same thing was tried during the passage of the industry of 3G networks, the first digital networks which allowed, among other things, Apple to market its first iPhone beyond the American market.
Suppliers quickly referred to higher performing versions of 3G networks as 4G technology, which created some confusion when true 4G networks emerged. So much so that, since, in the upper right corner of smartphones, we see a small “4G” icon when the device is connected to a mid-generation wireless network. True 4G is now called LTE, for Long-Term Evolution.
In the case of 5G networks currently in service, the two main elements that define this new generation of wireless are still missing: the almost total absence of latency, i.e. a delay of less than 10 milliseconds between sending and receiving. a wireless signal, and a data transfer rate that will again be five to ten times faster than it is now.
The first 6G networks are expected around the turn of the next decade, but one can already imagine that suppliers will rush to talk about them as soon as possible. Especially since 6G will be a smoother evolution of 5G than the latter has been compared to its predecessor.
In short, we will therefore probably see no real 6G application in 2022. But we will hear a lot about it.