The scramble for 6G and the gentle shark bite of commercial realities

6G will be truly huge. Some of the hype is real. Much higher speeds, higher capacity, and greatly enhanced operational values are built in to 6G. This isn’t just a replacement for 5G. It’s a massive increase in communications scope and capabilities. The commercial stakes are truly gigantic.

The current frenzied charge to 6G is similar to the 5G hysteria stage of development. The tortuous history of 5G implementation dovetails with the current state of 6G early-stage deployment. It was messy, unfocused, and saddled with sales hype. Years later, 4G and 5G waddle on sedately in the domestic markets.

The other glaring similarity with 6G is more abstract but potentially brutal. As with the introduction of 5G. China and the US are determined to dominate. 5G introduction placed a lot of stress on foreign relations. 6G is an accelerated, hyper version of those issues, cubed and drastically widened.

This is a genuine arms race in terms of communications performance, capacity, and functional efficiencies. These are the critical selling points of 6G, and failure isn’t an option. The physical demands for 6G communications are massive and uncompromising.

Infrastructure vs emerging demand

This clash of 6G ideas and technologies extends all the way from the most basic hardware to macro network infrastructure. It incorporates everything from the need to define and “seamlessly” manage bandwidths to bandwidth sharing protocols, and the starry-eyed, utterly useless, blurry sales pitch horizons of future applications.

This is where the 5G analogy ends. The giant Megalodon shark swimming smugly in the 6G bathtub is AI.  There are smaller fish like organized cybercrime and finance, but it’s the one with the biggest continuous bite and no end in sight. This is a whole separate spectrum of issues that 4G and 5G never had to manage from inception. There’s nothing hypothetical about the problems.

Let’s not get too cute about this issue. This whole class of obsessive and often infuriating data gluttony is in a league of its own for capacity demand. It also comes prepackaged with its own class of unwanted and unnecessary major problems. Performance and security alone are potentially serious encumbrances to 6G.

Nor is there an easy fix in view. AI at the moment is a chaotic monument to inexcusable inefficiencies that never before existed, while putting a lot of demand on network capacity. AI management barely deserves to be flattered with the description of “ultimate sloppiness”. There is no “Moore’s Law for idiocy”. This neurotic, clunky tech is already an annoying liability in too many ways. How does spending billions on a global network of glorified hallucinating chatbots deliver value to anyone?

This is not an avoidable problem. The trash must be taken out before it takes out the world. 6G must be a heavy-duty, ultra-reliable business and consumer mega network. It’s not like there’s a choice. Data demand is now an exponential target for networks at all levels. Drivelling, corrupt artificial intelligences are more than a luxury.  

The much better news about 6G

In context with 6G infrastructure, the extremely good news is that 6G is definitely able to handle heavy data loads and high speeds. 5G isn’t even in the ballpark. The current benchmark for 6G is 1 terabyte per second, whereas the folklore speed for rural USA is 20Mbps. That’s far more than enough for any sort of mainstream consumer usage and most businesses.

This strong performance capacity is actually coming in ahead of demand. Relatively new and disparate things like VR TV and Steam Machine gaming are well within 6G parameters. These platforms are very good fits for 6G. Commercially, these technologies will be obvious drivers for 6G evolution.

Better still, 6G Cloud technologies are booming and the structure seems to be being mapped out without the blessings of irrelevant gimmicky nuisances. This includes innovations across the board like Sweden’s Sovereign AI Cloud and GPU-as-a-Service, which incorporates SaaS and training, support, and, very importantly, compliance.

International compliance frameworks for 6G

“Compliance” is the new keyword and basis for headlines about the rest of the core issues with 6G. Standards are needed to make global 6G work at all, let alone “seamlessly”. The various national agendas and rhetoric are out of their depth here.

The name of the game for global communications is interoperability. That’s what compliance really means operationally. These systems have to work together from the chips upwards. The US and China may find themselves with “insular technologies” (hideous expression) that nobody else wants, needs, or can use.

Add redundancy to this mix. It’s unavoidable. Some technologies may expire before they start, regardless of the bluster from great heights. From a commercial perspective, this is as likely to be tricky as it is expensive. Technology turnovers are now routine. Some are shocks, some are predictable. That translates into big risks.  Hardware, in particular, is highly vulnerable to obsolescence, but that now happens at incredible speeds. Software evolution is different but driven by the same forces. Investments can be poleaxed overnight. Compliance isn’t an option. It’s a life-or-death scenario and a safeguard for products of all kinds to ensure they can even get on the market.

6G market segmentation to the rescue?

Like it or not, 6G will be a universal network. That’s where the data load problems start and end. Market segmentation is a prime mechanism for commercial realities. It might help to start differentiating between segments to declutter the 6G range and dedicate bandwidths to demand.

Segmentation directly relates to demand. In 6G’s case, data volumes define demand. For 6G, demand naturally comes in tiers. The Cloud is one. Commercial demand is another. The sciences are another major subgroup. Domestic user demand is a separate but huge category.

These market segments all behave very differently from the perspective of 6G. NASA and someone babbling on a phone aren’t quite the same thing. In these cases, user demand defines bandwidths. It defines demand in real time. You could almost do this as a purely subscription environment. You could separate AI and give it its own dedicated framework. Just a thought.

You could dedicate bandwidths and capacities easily. 6G is not an insoluble new problem with too many issues. It could well be the solution to itself.

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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.