People often complain that 5G is just an upgraded version of 4G, as if the mobile network industry should invent time travel, or at least find a cure for cancer. Much of this is to blame on unimaginative marketers who over-advertise communication technology as it should excite consumers. This dates back to the 3G era, and the use of wireless devices to provide appropriate internet services, not just calls and text messaging, sounds really exciting. However, telecom companies missed the opportunity in this regard, ceding the opportunity to Internet companies, and this is where the real excitement comes in, according to the well-known communications media LightReading.
That's pretty unfair to network developers, who met Gen Z's needs for TikTok videos on the bus and did a pretty good job, and then heard many complain that 5G is nothing new. But networks are infrastructure like roads, railways, and gas pipelines, and unfortunately, no matter how good that infrastructure is, people take it for granted. They talk endlessly about cars, not the recently opened highways where cars can be driven. It differs from the web industry in that none of the road builders hire Kevin Bacon for large-scale marketing campaigns.
All this more or less guarantees that if the 6G industry continues along the same path, it will be a great disappointment regardless of the end result. After years of 5G downturn, executives do seem to be more cautious about 6G hype, but their silence is often because they want to see a reversal of fortune in the later stages of 5G first, but worryingly, 5G is being advertised as 5.5G before Kevin Bacon made the inevitable commercial pitch for BT. This does not mean a strategic rethinking.
To be sure, 6G will be a network technology that transmits packets over the air, not an teleportation device, a telecommunications metaverse, or the kind of brain-computer interface that Clint Eastwood used when he flew a Russian fighter jet in the movie Firefox. Some outlandish ideas may require this, including the weird "sensory internet" idea of transmitting smells and tastes over a network connection, but its boundaries are already clearly defined.
Rajesh Pankaj, CTO of InterDigital, which does 6G research, among other things, illustrated this well on a recent podcast on Telecoms.com. "Wireless technology is concerned with how to transfer a sequence of bits from point A to point B," he said. The meaning of these bits will be defined by others. You just talked about smells. Well, someone has to convert the chemical signal into bits in some way, and that's not a telecommunications task. ”
Telecommunications' task is to ensure that the network can handle these bits. But in 2032, it's unlikely that anyone will embrace the web technology after a day of exploring the metaverse, just as people don't praise 4G when they place an order on Uber or watch Netflix on a train. In the 6G era, different industry structures (e.g., fewer networks after a merger, or the silly idea of internet companies paying carriers) may improve returns. But most ordinary people have not significantly increased their spending because of the promotion of 5G, and they will not do it for 6G.
6G pressure
This increases the likelihood that operators will invest less than 5G on 6G. When it comes to network performance, it's natural to assume that the next G will bring bigger and faster pipes and be less prone to latency. But Howard Watson, BT's chief security and networking officer, doesn't even think 6G will become a new air interface, or that the high-frequency range coverage typically associated with 6G is so amazing that customers need to be close to base station masts to get a signal.
Instead, Watson believes that 6G will focus primarily on sensing, or in his words, "the ability to detect passive IoT devices," and artificial intelligence (AI) for network management. Neither necessarily requires spending billions of dollars on equipment upgrades, and after spending billions on 5G in recent years, Watson seems eager to avoid such upgrades.
Of course, networks will eventually depreciate and need to be replaced, but they are more software-based than ever. Nokia's latest 5G software runs on cards embedded in common servers, allowing customers to upgrade their networks without having to change hardware as frequently as before.
However, operators may replace equipment so they can benefit from the latest energy-saving technologies. Telefónica proudly pointed out that between 2015 and 2022, its annual energy consumption decreased by 7.2%, despite a seven-fold increase in traffic. But this does not prove that the new technology is more efficient. This may simply mean that the increase in traffic has little impact on energy consumption. Even if there is no impact, hardware gains may be constrained by the law of diminishing returns, and it seems more promising to use AI to cut off the network during the pandemic.
Hidden value
This situation is really worrying for equipment suppliers like Ericsson. Ericsson currently makes money mainly by selling 5G network boxes. This requires consumers to continue to spend, and they are less willing to do so if their own sales are flat. As a result, they have recently struggled to generate value from hidden network features. The hope is that if a company develops an application that can be used on multiple telecommunications networks, it will pay for access to those features.
In other words, the idea that a gaming company pays the operator, reduces latency, starts over and gets more software spins is old. But there is no standardized application programming interface (API) that can compensate for broken base stations or capacity crunch. If the base station is brand new and capacity is abundant, why do you need APIs? Watson is one of the telecom executives who don't trust developers to pay.
Until 6G, this will put the mobile industry in the same position as in consumer-facing and enterprise-facing markets — working to "monetize" 5G beyond selling basic connectivity. The growth of telecom sales does not depend on customer demand for network functions and communication technologies. But after countless telecom companies failed to diversify in entertainment, media, banking and other businesses, these features and communications technologies seem to be the only thing left. This is not a healthy area anymore. (Proofreader/Wu Shouzhe)