It wasn’t that long ago that the telecoms industry saw 5G as the next big revolutionary technology.

“5G will have an impact similar to the introduction of electricity or the car, affecting entire economies and benefiting entire societies,” former Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said back in 2017.

Mollenkopf wasn’t alone in making such a big claim about the technology. In 2018, former O2 chief operating officer Derek McManus made a similar statement, and there have been plenty of others within the telecommunications industry that hyped up the then-new generation of wireless.

Fast-forward to 2024, and GSMA figures reveal that more than 260 operators have launched 5G across more than 100 countries.

But with 5G now a mature technology in several markets, attention is turning to 6G, which will be the sixth generation of mobile connectivity.

The rate at which the topic is being talked about at telecoms industry events is growing, and while it may not yet have the buzz that accompanies discussions around AI, 6G is definitely on the agenda.

Managing expectations

Industry experts don’t expect 6G to hit the airwaves until around the end of the decade, with many suggesting the first such commercial networks will launch around 2030.

At present, the technology is in the pre-standardization phase, with standards and features yet to be finalized.

The first 6G specification will appear in 3GPP’s Release 21, which is set to be completed around Q4 2028. Following this, initial commercial deployments are expected to begin a year or so from then, and then on into the new decade.

For context, the telecoms industry is currently working on Release 19, which is 5G Advanced.

But vendors, including Nokia and Ericsson, are already looking to the future, and were researching what 6G might look like long before 5G was even launched.

Petter Vetter, president of Nokia Bell Labs Core Research, told DCD that the company’s 6G research started more than five years ago. This was because, Vetter says, “you need to be at least 10 years ahead of the curve.”

He explains: “The expectation is, every decade, there is a new generation of networks. So 6G is expected to come around 2030, an important reason to have a new generation is that you have new technologies, but you also have new requirements and new spectrum for new capacity.”

At present, Nokia Bell Labs is in the phase of researching 6G, which it claims will “radically transform” what a network can do, unleashing new potential in the people and businesses that use these networks.

According to the company, 6G will “fuse the physical, digital, and human worlds,” allowing for interaction between digital and physical realities.

Nokia’s Nordic rival Ericsson has also been working on 6G. Magnus Frodigh, VP and head of Ericsson Research, tells DCD that Ericsson has been researching the technology since 2017.

Frodigh explains the current status of 6G development is very much a work in progress, as the industry works on standardizations of the technology.

He says: “We are already in this alignment phase between different players, trying to see what they believe, what we believe, and see where we agree and to find some sort of consensus on what 6G should be.”

Though we heard similar promises with 5G, Frodigh says he expects 6G to drive augmented reality use cases, along with digital twins.

Ericsson has already signed 6G deals with carriers, including a Memorandum of Understanding with UAE-based telco e& to explore 6G technology concepts.

Other big-name vendors such as Huawei and Samsung are also looking ahead to 6G.

During Huawei’s Mobile Broadband Forum held in Istanbul, Turkey, in October, Turkcell’s CEO suggested 5G Advanced, otherwise known as 5.5G, is an important part of the eventual transition to 6G.

“We need to be clear and very precise about this, 5G is not an upgrade," said Dr. Ali Taha Koç, the carrier’s chief executive. "It's a new phase in which we will connect intelligence. With 5G we start to connect intelligence.

"The value of 5.5G technology is that it's a step towards 6G and the future of communication. So we need to use 5.5G in the ladder to 6G, while we must continue to invest in private technology, in coalition with our mobile and public institution partners."

An evolution of 5G?

While vendors have kicked off their research into 6G, delivering their early views on the technology, industry analysts are doing their best to make sense of what 6G will look like.

Chris Antlitz, principal analyst at Technology Business Research, expects to see an “evolution” of 5G.

“6G is shaping up to be an addendum to LTE and 5G, providing a new antenna overlay that supports net-new frequency bands, as well as enhanced spectral efficiency features and capabilities that provide further network performance and operational improvement,” he suggests.

He adds: “The telecoms industry must also contend with supporting new use cases and how to embed AI, ML, and sustainability into the fabric of the network while covering security gaps and preparing for a post-quantum cryptography world.

“Though there is tremendous brainpower (spanning the public and private sectors as well as academia) assembled to tackle these issues, growth prospects for the telecom industry continue to look challenging.”

Vetter agrees that AI adoption will be a big driver for 6G.

“The new technology that justifies a next-generation now is AI,” explains Vetter. “Having an AI native approach is a very important target for 6G. The network needs to be more programmable and allow for more monetization.”

5G has not been a success

To understand what 6G will look like, it’s important to understand its predecessor. 5G has been available since 2018, but the race to launch was frantic and arguably rushed, and many question the technology’s success.

“Some said that 5G would be a generation like no other. That has turned out to be true but not in the manner expected,” wrote Professor William Webb in his book, The 6G Manifesto, which sets out to learn from what he views as the “disappointment” of 5G.

“The expectation was that 5G would lead to vast numbers of connected devices, to new ‘metaverse-like’ ways of communicating, to autonomous cars, and robotic surgeons; in short to a science-fiction world. Instead, 5G has led to increasingly cash-strapped MNOs and a skeptical population. The metaverse, autonomous cars, and robotic surgery remain far away.”

Webb argues that 5G failed to identify a tangible solution to an existing problem, noting that 2G delivered capacity and security, before 3G added data, while 4G fixed the technical issues of 3G. He says the technology has been massively overhyped.

Instead, he suggests that “in the absence of clear needs for 5G,” the industry “made some up.”

Still, he’s not alone in his views on 5G being a disappointment. Andy Hicks, senior principal analyst at research company Global Data, says vendors and carriers “oversold” the technology.

“They were pitching 5G as if it was some sort of amazing thing,” Hicks says. “The network response is better, but what's the major 5G use case? It's fixed wireless. That's about as unexciting a use case from a new technology point of view as you can get.”

Learning from 5G hiccups

When 5G was first launched, the technology was based on non-standalone architecture (NSA), meaning it was designed to be deployed on top of an existing 4G LTE network.

A few years later, 5G Standalone (5G SA) technology emerged, which was not reliant on older mobile generations and was based solely on a 5G core network. Many observers, and even telcos, refer to this as the “true 5G.”

According to Antlitz, launching 5G NSA was a mistake.

“The industry is really trying to take the learning from the 5G NSA debacle, because it was not a good idea to do NSA,” he explains.

“I was at an event recently and a lot of people were saying that NSA has done the industry a great disservice because it fails to live up to the promises of what 5G was supposed to be. It was a band-aid that didn’t give the industry what it needed.”

Antlitz noted that 5G NSA wasn’t able to drive capabilities such as network slicing, touted as a key benefit of 5G. He argues that even in 2024, the majority of carriers still don’t have a 5G network. “We cannot make that same mistake again with 6G,” he says.

Ericsson’s Frodigh agrees that the move to launch 5G NSA might not have been the right avenue for the technology.

“That's been a good learning,” he says. “It was very unfortunate that we were forced into this. There were a lot of customers wanting to launch 5G before the core networks were updated, and then we got this NSA, and that was not a good move.”

Yet, Nokia’s Vetter maintains that 5G has been a success.

“I think NSA was a very good introduction scenario [for 5G], but it has slowed down the move to a 5G core,” he explains.

Because of this, he adds, the mobile industry has not been able to leverage 5G Standalone as rapidly as hoped.

“The lesson learned with 6G is to make sure that evolution allows for an immediate use of the 6G capabilities,” he says.

In his book, Webb says that despite the shortcomings of 5G, it won’t stop 6G from emerging in the coming years. However, he says that there’s plenty that can be learned from 5G.

He says he wants mobile carriers to provide a stronger voice in setting out what they require for 6G, which may require helping to educate politicians, he points out.

“The overriding lesson for 6G is to find solutions to problems, not the other way around,” says Webb.

Are we ready for 6G?

While vendors and carriers will be keen on pushing the latest technology they have to offer, Hicks doesn’t think it’s necessary to rush 6G.

“I really hope that it's not going to be a repeat of the same thing where 2030 comes out with a new radio generation and nothing else, and then it's only sort of the middle of the 2030s where we actually start really deploying a 6G core,” he explains.

Indeed, Hicks says he would rather the industry slowed down the rollout of 6G, in favor of making sure there are tangible use cases in place that can enable value for businesses.

Paul Rhodes, director of RAN at Edge data center firm AtlasEdge, is also cautious on the topic of 6G. “Nobody has yet come up with a compelling use case for 6G,” he says. “There are lots of things to happen with 5G and, at this point in time, there's no reason to be enthusiastic and excited for 6G.” Rhodes believes it is in the interest of vendors, rather than the carriers to push for a new technology.

“For Ericsson and Nokia, they want to push their products, and their product is hardware,” he says. “So every 10 years, they want to push some new hardware, because that's how they make their money.”

He believes the technology needed for 6G may be software-based, which could help carriers save some money compared to the costly hardware installations required by previous generations.

We must work towards 6G now

Many working groups have already been formed to investigate 6G and are enthusiastically pushing the technology’s benefits.

One such group is the 6G Smart Networks and Services Industry Association (6G-IA), an organization that calls itself the voice of the European industry and research for next-generation networks and services.

The 6G-IA works alongside the European Commission on the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU), which is the European Union’s funding for 6G research. It’s one of the largest sources of non-commercial funds for 6G research with a budget of at least €1.8 billion ($1.9bn).

The group aims to unite the telecoms and digital actors, such as operators, manufacturers, research institutes, universities, verticals, SMEs, and ICT associations. Its list of partners includes vendors Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, and Samsung, plus telcos such as Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone.

“5G is a really good network and it has delivered technically the promises that it had made. But if we want to do better during 6G, we have to take some considerations and some lessons learned from 5G,” explains Dr. Alexandros Kaloxylos, executive director of 6G IA.

“One of these is that the architecture should not have too many options. It should not be too complicated, because if you go to standardize all these things, there is a lot of effort to standardize, and sometimes not all standardized features are used in operational networks. So the design of 6G networks needs to be made based on sensible decisions that will bring benefits to the end users and will offer clear monetized solutions for vendors and operators.”

He notes that 6G will continue the industry’s vision to be more sustainable, while AI will also support this, through the use of more intelligent networks.

“We believe that AI can be beneficial in two things,” Kaloxylos says. “First of all, improved operation of the networks themselves, and at the same time offer AI as a service to service providers for vertical industries.

“5G has delivered considerable improvement on energy efficiency, and network performance but it has, so far, failed to keep its promise for engagement from vertical industries.”

Who will be pushing for 6G?

Analysts expect network vendors to do a lot of the groundwork for 6G, given their interest in selling the hardware that 6G will require.

Carriers will also be expected to chip in, but telcos are fairly tight-lipped about pushing 6G just yet, justifiably so given 5G’s room for growth with the launch of more 5G SA networks.

Antlitz expects the level of capex investment from carriers to be more subdued with 6G compared to 5G.

By the end of last year, Analysys Mason reported that mobile operators had globally invested more than $600 billion in cumulative capex on 5G networks. Similar numbers for 6G investment are tricky to find, but GSMA Intelligence estimates that between 2023 and 2030, carrier capex will hit $1.5 trillion.

“The telecom industry continues to struggle with realizing new revenue and deriving return on investment from 5G, even after five years of market development,” says Antlitz. “TBR continues to see no solution to this persistent challenge and with no catalyst on the horizon to change the situation, communication service providers’ (CSPs) appetite for and scope of investment in 6G will likely be limited.”

Are carriers cautious on 6G?

One carrier that is proactively looking ahead to 6G is SK Telecom. The South Korean firm is currently carrying out R&D activities for 6G and is working with Nokia, NTT, and NTT Docomo on the development of a 6G AI-native air interface which it hopes will help advance AI telco infrastructure.

That said, the carrier is cautious about 6G, noting that it’s crucial to develop tangible use cases to push beyond what 5G could offer.

“Unlike previous generations, 6G is expected to present both opportunities and challenges for MNOs,” says Minsoo Na, director and head of 6G R&D at SK Telecom. “Earlier generations of mobile communications were able to generate revenue by efficiently handling the surge in data traffic with the help of advanced wireless transmission technology.

“However, the technology to efficiently manage this increasing data traffic has already reached maturity with 5G. Therefore, the incentive to evolve to 6G, overlaid on 5G infrastructure, may not be substantial if it relies solely on revenue from data traffic.”

Na says that SK Telecom is focusing on new usage scenarios “on top of what was defined in 5G for 6G’s deployment.”

According to Na, the capex challenge of developing a new generation of mobile network is a significant challenge for mobile operators. He says that AI will help carriers monetize 6G.

“To turn these challenges into opportunities, there is a need to enhance service intelligence and diversify revenue streams through collaborations with industries outside of telecommunications,” he says.

“The integration of AI into telecommunications could be one significant method to achieve this.”

As for potential use cases, Na suggests it will include autonomous driving and robots, plus a meeting of the real world with the digital world through the metaverse, XR, and digital twins. It’s worth remembering these same use cases were thrown about by carriers prior to 5G’s launch.

Governments might just run the 6G race

Where vendors and networks have previously been the ones to get excited about next-generation networks, now governments are also taking a keen interest in how technology can drive future innovation and generate billions of dollars for economies around the world.

An example of this is when the UK government revealed it would award £28 million ($35.7m) to three UK universities to help design and develop 6G network technology with selected vendors.

With this in mind, the race for 6G may be more political, argues Antlitz. “6G will happen, and the reason it's going to happen is because the major governments of the world have designated 6G a technology of national and societal importance,” he says.

“TBR expects the level of government involvement in the cellular networks domain (via stimulus, R&D support, purchases of 6G solutions, and other market-influencing mechanisms) to significantly increase and broaden, as 6G has been shortlisted as a technology of national strategic importance.”

He says that China’s position on 5G is an example of the government heavily pushing mobile technology, and argues its position has forced the West to invest heavily as well, impacting telcos along the way.

“We've seen unprecedented government involvement in certain technologies, including but not limited to quantum computing, Open RAN, plus new energy technologies that are deemed to be of national security interest, like small modular nuclear reactors,” Antlitz says.

He adds that while the economics might not always seem to make sense, the societal and national imperatives for investing in those technologies are significant. Because of this, Antlitz expects that the public sector will take the lead on seeding and facilitating market development versus the private sector for most of these strategic technologies.

For the many

While opinions on what 6G networks will look like remain varied, the feeling that the technology will arrive by 2030 appears almost universal.

Nokia Bell Labs’ Vetter argues: “Every 10 years or so, you buy a new car, and you’re not going to buy a smelly old diesel, you’ll go for an electric vehicle or something that has the latest technology. It’s the same with technology.”

It’s this technology that Vetter says will bring more efficient mobile networks for the carriers.

If 5G hasn’t been a success - and to many, including Webb, it hasn’t - then 6G needs to deliver something more.

“We have not benefited from 5G, despite being told that it will transform our lives, and we have lost faith that the existing companies and methodologies will deliver what we want rather than what some researchers believe we need,” Webb writes.

“We want our voice to drive 6G in a direction that makes the world a better place. “6G should be for the many, not the few.”

This feature appeared in Issue 55 of the DCD Magazine. Read it for free today.