The news of Japan's announcement of a breakthrough in the research and development of 6G technology has caused an uproar in the domestic scientific and technological circles like a heavy artillery shell thrown into a calm lake. In this wave of panic-driven counterattacks, many authoritative experts in the industry have spoken out, intending to question the true value of Japan's 6G achievements, but unexpectedly, this series of fierce rebuttals unconsciously ripped off the thin fig leaf of 5.5G technology, exposing the embarrassing truth hidden behind it - the so-called "iteration" in the field of mobile communications, which does not seem to have touched the real core of technological innovation.
A well-known popular science writer pointed out sharply that since the dust has not yet settled on the technical standards of 6G, any publicity on the market that claims to be a "6G product" will look suspicious and even fraudulent. He further emphasized that Japan's so-called 6G achievements are essentially just a simple stacking of spectrum resources in exchange for speed improvements, which pale in terms of technological innovation and lack depth and foresight.
Looking back on history, the United States' vigorous promotion of 5G millimeter wave technology finally collapsed due to the lack of millimeter wave penetration ability, and this lesson does not seem to have been fully learned. Today, 5.5G technology seems to be repeating the same wrong path, trying to widen the frequency band to 1000M by combining 5G centimeter wave and the frequency band abandoned by millimeter wave, so as to achieve 10Gbps high-speed transmission, which is similar to Japan's 6G quick fix, in fact, it is all about spectrum width, not a qualitative leap.
This expert's remarks are undoubtedly a ruthless puncture of the current 5.5G technology halo. If the standard of 6G is still in the fog, then any discussion of 6G patent leadership will not be a castle in the air? Who will be in charge of the 6G era is still a huge question mark at present.
What's more, this strategy of simply relying on increasing the spectrum width to increase speed has actually shown its limitations in the 5G era. From 4G to 5G, although there has been an increase in peak rates, this is more a result of the expansion of the spectrum width from 20M to 100M than a fundamental improvement in spectral efficiency. In other words, 5G's data transmission efficiency per unit of spectrum resources is not significantly improved.
Another pain point of 5G centimeter wave - poor penetration, also plagues 5.5G and even 6G in the future. Due to the defects of small coverage, high construction cost, and weak penetration of buildings, 5G centimeter-wave base stations in cities have led to frequent "signal dead spots", especially in indoor environments and complex urban structures. These problems will undoubtedly be exacerbated by the higher frequency bands of 6G, whose projected ultra-short coverage radius (only about 100 meters) portends exponential increases in deployment costs and energy consumption.
To sum up, Japan's successful announcement of 6G, instead of arousing the excitement of the domestic science and technology community, unexpectedly exposed the deep-seated problems in the evolution path of 5.5G and even the entire mobile communication technology: the lack of technological innovation, the persistence of high-frequency coverage problems, and the over-reliance on spectrum resources. This series of real-world challenges makes people wonder if 4G, a communication standard that strikes a good balance between practicality and cost-effectiveness, will continue to play an irreplaceable role for some time to come.