6g – The new race in the background

by Bruno Ribeiro / Senior Consultant 

Currently at Crossjoin we are embracing and assisting our clients with 5g implementations and their IOT (Internet of Things) roadmap. Density and Speed are the factors: 5g promises 20Gbps vs 4g 1Gbps and around 1 million devices connected per square kilometer vs 4g 4000 devices. Predictions are that 4g will reach its technical limit at around 2025 and 5g should support customers and the industry until around 2035 (some return of investment is also needed to jumpstart the next goal).

What else is next?

The 6g Summit in Finland that occurred in March 24th, 2019. 250 Researchers started a brainstorming to define the next leap in networking technology.

Some high-level goals have been defined:

• 1Tbps connection – This means signals being transmitted at around 1THz require chips, energy sources and computing architectures to evolve in order to support it.
• Decentralized Communications Operator – As we increase the number of devices connected, the Telcos will have to offer more than “a data plan for X devices”. One possibility is to sell its own “portable” communications operator to decentralize and make its infrastructure more flexible and scalable.
• Power consumption – Currently, 10% of the global energy is used in Datacenters. As we move towards an “always connected anywhere” world where information becomes the newest “currency”, power consumption and heat generation becomes a worrying factor. More efficient chips or even chips created from metamaterials might reduce the heat generation. Other solutions revolve around Datacenters being used as central heating for homes or even Datacenters in space/on the moon solar powered.
• Other goals dependent on technology advancement – Some other technologies that, if launched to the masses, will require high speed networking: Quantum computing, Optical chips and Brain-Computer remote interfaces.

Meanwhile, most of the industry is currently focused on passing the marketing message of 5g and getting it’s return of investment, there is no need to speak about 6g yet. Nevertheless, it cannot be ignored the fact that China’s government already started efforts on 6g with a goal to dominate the market in 2030. LG already announced its research center for 6g in South Korea. Additionally, this summit had Nokia and Huawei as Gold Partners.