6G in 2030: The panacea for enterprises is here again

While 5G is still positioned as a “near-term” game-changer, experts and telecom vendors are already discussing the network characteristics, performance expectations, and use cases that 6G, the next generation of wireless technology, will support.

Meanwhile, analysts are still busy digesting the evolving information about 5G’s capabilities as they are tasked with providing answers to pressing questions such as:

• What are the real-world 5G B2B use cases today and what will they be tomorrow?
• When (and how) will operators turn 5G enterprise services into profitable businesses?
• What will be added to the next phase of 3GPP standards?
• How will slicing and 5G SA change the current feature set?
• How will the ecosystem evolve and who will win?

Just as we begin to work through these challenges, working groups, vendors, and service providers are already planning for the next generation of technology and associated consumer and enterprise use cases, and 6G is on the horizon.

6G World

The biennial 6G World Symposium is a great source of information on the enabling technologies and use cases that will be available to enterprises in 8-10 years. While the September 2021 Fall Symposium was primarily about networking, the Spring 2022 conference includes more details on emerging use cases.

6G networks will significantly enhance 5G technology, including increasing data rates to 100 Gbps, potentially reducing latency to a few microseconds, and allowing 10 million devices to be connected per square kilometer. With such performance expectations, 6G-enabled enterprise technologies and use cases could theoretically reach a new level that will not only impact the speed of data/video transmission, but also change the way companies communicate, process information, train employees, and make decisions.

Here are some examples from 6G World 2022:

• AR/VR. According to Avnet Abacus, the extended reality (XR) market is already expanding in the enterprise thanks to 5G, with deployments ranging from Industry 4.0 digital twins, location-based VR, and remote learning tools. In the 6G future, immersive communications, holographic telepresence, and AR/VR are expected to become the default communication methods, which will require 8k video resolution per lens. To support this, 6G must provide end-user data rates of up to 10 Gbit/s.
• Private networks. While 4G and 5G private networks are beginning to make inroads into industrial verticals, there’s more to come. NEC predicts that 2030 will bring: hyper-realistic communications that transcend time and space, and the expansion of digital twins to enable seamless connectivity between people, objects, and experiences, regardless of geography. NEC is a member of the Beyond 5G Promotion Alliance, which is dedicated to understanding technology and market trends in 2030 and their impact on a wide range of industries. For example, in warehousing and logistics, the Internet of Things, Cyberport, digital transformation, digital twins, robots, and drones will provide fully automated operations, as well as advanced applications of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and non-terrestrial networks.
• Self-driving cars, expansion of communications into space and the ocean, and major medical breakthroughs are also expected to emerge as a result of 6G and related technologies. Multimodal mobility, collaboration between vehicles and smart cities, remote surgery, nanorobotics, personalized medicine, AI-powered drug discovery, and augmented humans with “brain machines” for people with disabilities are just a few examples.

While some of the use cases (many, actually) are the same game-changing ones we’ve heard about 5G for years, 6G’s improved performance can support them more effectively. Soon, we can start asking the same questions about the 6G ecosystem, monetization initiatives, and real-world use cases (vs. hype) that we struggle to understand today with 5G.