6G Will Not be Like the Other G’s

TBR Perspective on 6G

6G is unlikely to look like the other G’s in terms of cycle length and scope and level of investment as the beleaguered telecom industry continues to struggle with implementing and realizing ROI from 5G. The telecom 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.
 
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. The missing link in the value equation remains how the telecom industry will monetize these new technologies beyond traditional mobile broadband (MBB) and fixed wireless access (FWA) services, and this lack of clear monetization threatens to relegate 6G to a continuation of what was observed during the LTE and 5G eras.
 
TBR continues to see no fundamental change or catalyst on the horizon that will bring CSPs more revenue. The primary incentive for CSPs to invest in 6G, therefore, will remain reduction in the cost per bit to support growing data traffic. This means the ROI for 5G still does not exist, which will likely limit the appetite and scope of investment in 6G. As such, TBR expects CSP capex investment for 6G will be subdued compared with previous G’s and deployment of the technology will be tactical in nature, which is a marked deviation from the multihundred-billion-dollar investments in spectrum and infrastructure associated with the nationwide deployments during each of the prior cellular eras.
 
Additionally, the 6G cycle may be significantly longer in duration than prior cellular generations due to the exponential increase in complexity inherent in these systems and the pace of data traffic growth, which has been slowing.
 
Against this backdrop, private cellular networks represent a real, significant threat to CSPs, as enterprises can extract most, if not all, of what they need from networks without requiring CSPs in the value chain. CSPs’ edge assets continue to be considered a key vector for CSPs to reassert themselves in the market, but this overlooks the alternative paths that enterprises and hyperscalers have to bypass CSPs to get what they need (e.g., real estate, access to power and fiber) at the edge layer.
 
The 5G cycle is now 5 years old, and the telecom industry is still struggling to adopt and deploy virtualization, open RAN and network slicing, much less a 5G standalone (SA) network architecture. This reality implies expectations for 6G will need to be tempered further. TBR believes 6G (at least the first phase of 6G, which will be represented in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project’s [3GPP] Release 21 standards) will only bring spectral and cost-per-bit efficiency improvements and potentially some net-new enterprise-specific features and capabilities. 6G is unlikely to bring any more significant or profound outcomes than 5G, at least not from CSPs.
 
TBR believes hyperscalers, government entities (especially the defense sector) and large enterprises are likely to reap the most benefit from 6G. For CSPs, 6G is likely to primarily be an infill solution to address complex environments and enhance network capacity and speed for existing MBB and FWA offerings.
 
Taken together, 6G will ultimately happen, and commercial deployment of 6G-branded networks will likely begin in the late 2020s, but it remains to be seen whether 6G will be a brand only or a legitimate set of truly differentiated features and capabilities that bring broad and significant value to the global economy. Either way, the scope of CSPs’ challenges is growing, while new value continues to be created outside their purview or goes over the top of their pipes.
 

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Impacts and Opportunities in 6G

Upper-midband Spectrum Is in Play for 6G

After an initial belief several years ago that 6G would leverage millimeter wave and terahertz spectrum, the wireless technology ecosystem has settled on the upper midbands, specifically in the 7GHz-24GHz range (also known as the Frequency Range 3 [FR3] tranche). Within FR3, 7GHz-15GHz is considered to be the golden range for 6G as it has the best balance between coverage and capacity and there is approximately 1600MHz of total bandwidth that could be made available in the U.S.
 
However, one of the biggest issues with these “golden bands” is the need for CSPs to coexist with incumbent users, such as government entities and satellite operators, which utilize some of these channels for various purposes and would need to either be cleared, refarmed or shared with CSPs for use in cellular communications. The telecom industry already has some experience with shared spectrum through CBRS, which operates in the 3.5GHz band, so there is a pre-existing framework and mechanism in place (i.e., Spectrum Access System) from which to begin establishing a spectrum sharing system for these new bands.
 
Ultimately, TBR believes that 6G will end up leveraging a mix of spectrum tranches, with midband, upper midband and mmWave frequencies all in play. Carrier aggregation and other frequency-combination technologies, as well as advancements in beamforming and endpoint devices, make these spectrum bands perform better when working together. Additionally, FR3 spectrum is not good at penetrating walls. Given around 80% of wireless traffic is generated indoors — a statistic that is unlikely to change materially in the 6G era — FR3 bands would need to be complemented with lower bands to penetrate walls and provide optimal coverage and capacity.

Nonterrestrial Networks (NTN), aka Satellite Connectivity, Enters the Mainstream

The NTN domain is flourishing, and satellite connectivity will be a mainstream technology for both businesses and consumers by the end of this decade. Satellite-provided connectivity will cover most of the Earth (and nearly the entire human population) with at least basic text messaging services, though some NTN providers will also provide high-speed broadband services as well as a range of other communications services, such as voice, just like a traditional CSP.
 
The most disruptive impact of NTN will be closing the cellular coverage gap and reducing the digital divide. Approximately 10% of Earth’s surface and 5% of the global human population, or around 800 million people, still lack cellular network coverage, and satellites can close this gap relatively quickly and at a significantly lower price compared to building out terrestrial macro base station sites in rural and remote areas. The ability to provide truly global network coverage has created a new paradigm in the telecom industry, shaping end-user expectations and pushing CSPs to align with (and increasingly compete against) NTN providers.

FWA Is Not Getting the Attention It Deserves

The mobile industry continues to largely view FWA as an ancillary offering, and the use case is not receiving the level of attention and innovation that it should given FWA’s resounding success in the market. Some attendees noted that current standards do not adequately factor in and focus enough on FWA and that networks are not architected to optimally support this use case. Spectral efficiency technologies tailored to optimize FWA traffic could free up significant capacity on existing networks that could be utilized for other purposes.
 
There are also energy-efficiency considerations for FWA. Mobile network operators (MNOs) have a vested interest in pushing standards bodies and network vendors to innovate on FWA because margins are low and there is room to alleviate some of this margin impact by applying technological innovations. In addition, MNOs want standards bodies and vendors to focus on architecting cellular standards to support unlicensed spectrum bands so that network coverage and capacity can be enhanced with minimal investment by aggregating licensed spectrum with unlicensed spectrum. The 6GHz band is especially pertinent to these considerations.

The Energy Problem Has No Easy Fix

Though the wireless technology ecosystem will continue to eke out gains on energy efficiency and performance, an as-yet-undetermined paradigm shift will be required to fundamentally break the linear relationship between network performance and energy usage. Additionally, AI is unlikely to help address this issue when factoring in the net energy impact because AI workloads are inherently power hungry.
 
Given this rising demand for energy, in addition to driving further reduction in the cost per bit, the broader economy and public sector should focus more on innovations in energy production and distribution, such as more deeply exploring small modular [nuclear] reactors (SMR) and cold fusion, to produce and widely distribute high-output, sustainable, low carbon-footprint energy. Said differently, it will become increasingly difficult to squeeze energy efficiency out of network infrastructure, so focusing on creating cleaner energy at greater scale is a sounder long-term strategy than emphasizing a lower net utilization of energy to achieve sustainability goals.

AI and ML Will Initially be Leveraged for Network Optimization

AI and ML will come into the network domain slowly. Network optimization-related use cases will likely be the initial focus areas, as AI and ML can provide significant outcomes by running complex simulations, such as ray tracing, propagation modeling and channel management (e.g., spectrum access sharing and dynamic spectrum sharing) at scale.
 
Though AI and ML promise a higher degree of automation to accomplish optimization-related tasks, there is concern that the amount and cost of energy required to run these simulations will outweigh the benefits. There is some validity to this concern, but attendees were confident there will be pockets of use cases or workarounds that will mitigate energy consumption and make networks more resilient and higher performing by leveraging AI and ML.

Western Governments Need to be More Proactive to Keep Their Countries at the Forefront of Innovation

Evidence suggests the West is falling behind China in key technologies, most notably in 5G SA, 6G, quantum computing, SMR and other key areas, despite Western governments allocating unprecedented sums of fiscal and monetary support for the technology sector and broader economy during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments, therefore, will need to take a more assertive approach rather than setting big-picture guidelines and relying on the private sector to figure things out. Since the current model is not yielding the desired results, a change will be needed to alter the trajectory. Greater reliance on hyperscalers will likely factor into the equation for a solution.
 
The most glaring deficiency in the Western world is regulatory clarity and policy agenda. For example, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has been restrained and restricted from advancing important spectrum policies, and special interests have been creating encumbrances that slow down or prevent the wireless technology ecosystem from optimally moving forward (e.g., inconsistent policies around private spectrum and the use of shared bands like 6GHz create harmonization challenges and disincentivize attaining critical mass in the broader industry).

Scope of Government Support for the Telecom Industry Will Likely Increase

The persistent lack of ROI to justify private sector investment in 6G (and cellular networks more broadly) will ultimately push governments deeper into the telecom industry, prompting governments to increase the scope of their involvement in the wireless technology ecosystem as well as make these support structures more embedded in nature. During the first half of the 5G cycle, governments from various countries around the world pumped many hundreds of billions of dollars in aggregate into their respective domestic technology sectors via various stimulus programs, which provide direct or indirect, low- or zero-interest rate loans, subsidies and other means of market support.
 
Additional government backing will be required to enable the full benefits of 6G to come to fruition. Governments have a vested interest in supporting the telecom industry and the broader technology sector as it provides innovations of societal and national security importance and serves as foundational infrastructure to support long-term economic development. TBR expects governments in technology-forward countries (especially the U.S., China, Japan and South Korea) and regional blocs (e.g., the European Union) to continue underpinning R&D programs, subsidizing and/or directly paying for infrastructure deployment, and backstopping industry players that relate to national security concerns.
 
This model of industry stimulation was witnessed at unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic and now serves as a model for further government involvement. Workforce development has also emerged as a top-of-mind initiative for some governments as a means of preparing domestic workforces to handle new technologies and to offset the negative economic externalities that emerge from the impact of these new technologies (e.g., labor displacement from AI and how this can be mitigated).

Conclusion

6G will happen one way or another, with commercial deployments and services branded as 6G likely to commence by pioneering CSPs by 2030 (as originally expected within the confines of 10-year cellular generation cycles), but the wireless technology ecosystem seems to be absorbing much more than it can handle.
 
In addition to addressing the evolution of 3GPP standards for 6G, the ecosystem must also incorporate AI, ML, quantum and other nascent technologies as well as meet societal objectives, such as carbon zero, to align with theoretical expectations for the new G and the new use cases the technology is expected to enable.
 
The requirements for 6G are causing complexity to increase and are likely to make the ecosystem fall short on delivering these outcomes. Greater investment, collaboration and alignment across the public and private sectors, as well as with academia, will be required to address these challenges and set the telecom industry on a better path.