What would it be like to see 6G in a geopolitically divided world
A recent session of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and therefore the Australian Smart Communities Association (ASCA) masterclass on 5G, featured Dr. Ian Oppenheimer, the NSW Government’s Chief Data Scientist and one of the country’s most respected experts in radio technology. Ian is additionally the Chair of the scientific planning board of the 6G Flagship organization, a worldwide research organization based in Finland. This organization has just published a variety of fascinating research papers on 6G. If we look at previous mobile generations and perhaps start at 3G, we can see that with this technology, it became possible to access the Internet — however that was far from adequate for the technology explosion that happened around smartphones in the late 00s. Later, 4G was developed to improve that and there would be few people complaining about their use of the 4G service. With the increase in the use of apps and video and the move towards machine to machine (M2M) and the Internet of things (IoT), it was necessary to further develop mobile technology in relation to broadband capacity (and the increase in devices and sensors that are needing to provide access). This resulted within the 5G technology that’s currently being deployed. New mobile generations appear roughly every decade. Add to this the overall increase in population, and the mobile industry is facing some interesting challenges in providing its services nationwide. This coincides with a massive demand for mobile services across the globe. The 6G Flagship organisation is therefore linking the development of 6G very closely to the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Developments Goals. I can proudly state that i used to be ready to contribute to those goals as co-initiator of the UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development. Within this organization, we championed the utilization of technologies to be used as tools in achieving these UN goals. Some of the key fundamental issues that 6G will have to address include higher system capacity, higher data rate, lower latency and improved quality of service (QoS). While these issues are presented as a linear improvement of 5G, the reality is that these outcomes cannot be achieved by just improving the underlying network, software and spectrum technologies. In many areas, totally new technologies will got to be developed to form this happen. Take, for instance , the spectrum — one of Ian Oppenheimer’s special areas. For 6G, it’s the choice to maneuver into much higher frequencies, even beyond the terahertz (THz) level. The physical aspects of that spectrum are radically different, and our current technologies won’t be ready to use that spectrum. Higher frequencies also mean even shorter distances. New technologies are under development to beat that problem. It is also impossible to manage a 6G network in a central way. The trend is already towards edge networks, and this will have to be the norm for 6G. While this makes it ideal, for example, for city networks, smart energy networks and other specialised applications, it’ll require totally new business models. Telcos will not be able to control a 6G network in the same way as they have controlled previous generations. Instead, they will have to take on more of a broker’s position. This will open the door to a range of new service providers as well as great opportunities for competition. The recent move from Telstra to split itself up to better face future challenges can also be viewed in this context. However, at the same time, such over-the-top (OTT) models have also brought us near-monopolies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, for example. As a society, we’d like to stimulate innovation but at an equivalent time confirm that 6G are going to be used for the betterment of individuals and society generally , and not only for the profits of a couple of . A warning of caution here. As we have seen with 3G, 4G and 5G, there is an enormous amount of hype attached to these technologies, especially in the early days — driven by the manufacturers, who in fact have tons to realize by the operators buying their gear. Take 5G and its hype; we still must see any good business case beyond just a replacement of 4G because of the network’s need for extra capacity. Another aspect of 5G and 6G is that it basically can only be used in an economic sense in densely populated areas. In a previous Independent Australia article, l talked about satellites — as their importance are going to be growing, along side laser technologies — especially for rural and remote areas. However, the foremost challenging element of 6G will, in my opinion, be around problems with trust, privacy and security. 6G is a data-centric technology. Data will be its lifeblood. It is not too difficult to see that by the time 6G starts to arrive in the 2030s, data analytics, cloud computing and artificial intelligence will have seen exponential growth. If we talk about 6G as a data-driven technology, what that means is that it will be highly intelligent. It will be able to bring together enormous amounts of data from us, the people, our environment and many other sources. 6G technologies are going to be ready to provide data outcomes about people far beyond what these people realize themselves. 6G will be a vastly human-centered network, with highly personalized services. The big question here will be how we are going to manage this and make sure that this will be for the betterment of us and our society. Now, also put these developments within the current context of geopolitical polarisation and forever growing cyberwarfare. If we look at the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (which were published in 2015, when the world was a different place), how will we achieve those positive global outcomes in a rapidly dividing world?
