After 5G Was Idiotically Overhyped And Fell Flat, 6G Appears To Be A Nervous Mess

We’ve long noted how the “race to 5G” was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager to sell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it’s more of an evolution than a revolution.

But that’s not what telecom giants like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T promised. Both routinely promised that 5G would change the way we live and work, usher forth the smart cities of tomorrow, and even revolutionize the way we treat cancer. None of those things wound up being true (I enjoyed talking to one medical professional who basically laughed in my face about the cancer claim).

When 5G did arrive, it didn’t even live up to its basic promise, really. U.S. implementations were decidedly slower, spottier, and way more expensive than many overseas networks, thanks to the usual industry consolidation and U.S. regulatory fecklessness. The end result: wireless carriers associated a promising but not world-changing technological improvement with hype and bluster in the mind of consumers.

Telecoms have tried to goose interest and revenues by pretending that AI changes the equation somehow, but it hasn’t worked. Some telecoms have learned absolutely nothing from any of this and have charged face first into overhyping the sixth generation of wireless (6G), despite the fact it’s still in development.

Ericsson, for example, for a while there tried to proclaim 6G will create an “Internet of the senses” allowing consumers to “digitally transport themselves” all over the world (their rhetoric has quieted down over the last year or so). Samsung insists 6G will create “hyper connected AI experiences,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

With economic challenges afoot, many telecom execs are now running the other direction of 6G, annoyed that they couldn’t overbill customers for a modest evolution in connection quality and their 5G hype didn’t work. But there does seem to be growing caution, and some some fleeting awareness that they need to approach 6G more carefully as a modest evolution instead of a revolution:

“Ericsson, notably, did not even bother referring to 6G at its pre-MWC event in London last week. Much like its customers, the Swedish vendor is desperate to earn money from its 5G investments before it stakes a big sum on 6G. The latest message from Börje Ekholm, its boss throughout the 5G era, is that 6G, far from being a “new type of generation,” will appear in 2030 or so as an “evolution of 5G.” In other words, you won’t reach 6G without investing in 5G first.”

If you recall, people talked endlessly about how we needed to give telecom giants everything they wanted (merger approvals, less oversight, more subsidies) because we were in a “race to 5G” with China. None of those folks mentioned that China generally won that race (yes, state-owned infrastructure didn’t make for a fair fight) offering faster, much cheaper 5G.

For a while there, there was an effort to get all U.S. wireless on one unified standard. But with increasing international hostilities and less U.S. government coherence, there are growing concerns that 6G could actually split into two completely different 6G standards in use by the U.S. and China. On the plus side, the fractured disagreements on what 6G should look like means at the very least, we’ll be spared the same kind of mindless hype that plagued 5G. Maybe.