A cocktail of equal parts short-attention spans, swagger, and fierce competition muddled with geopolitical tension is giving rise to 6G — or at least the unrefined taste of it.

Research and collaborative efforts to foster the development of what comes after 5G are gaining momentum, but it’s more of a rallying cry to assert leadership than anything else at this stage. 

“At this point, 6G is little more than a concept. While it is relatively easy to understand the concept of a next generation of cellular technology beyond 5G, the specific objectives, technologies, and performance that 6G might offer are still very much unknown,” said Dan Hays, principal at PwC’s Strategy& division. 

While that next generation of cellular technology isn’t expected to arrive until the end of this decade, academia, infrastructure vendors, and operators are beginning to fuel its advance on various tracks.

ATIS, a telecommunications standards organization, last month framed 6G as an opportunity for US-based companies to partner with the government in a bid to put American-driven technology in the lead. The group issued a call to action, including a request for federal funding and tax relief for research and development into 6G.

“With more than a decade of industry consolidation behind us, American telecommunications technology providers have certainly diminished their role in the global mobile operator market,” Hays said. “But with 5G, and eventually 6G, leveraging technologies such as virtualization and software-as-a-service, we may well see a resurgence of American companies as suppliers into the communications industry.”

Other competing efforts are already underway as well. Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei last year said the Chinese juggernaut started working on 6G “a long time ago.” Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and some global operators are also in the early stages of 6G development as standalone entities and cooperative alliances.

There is some concern that the U.S. government’s efforts to cripple Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunication equipment vendor, could cause a wider rift and fragmentation of various network technologies, but Hays remains hopeful that cooler heads will prevail.

“Recent trade tensions and the current COVID-19 crisis have certainly impacted the supply base for communications hardware and software. However, the global communications industry seems to, so far, be successful in maintaining global coherence of network technology paths,” he told SDxCentral.

“While history has seen several periods of divergence in network technology, the industry appears to have learned its lesson and is sticking to global standards, at least for now,” Hays added. 

Irrespective of geography or market position, every person and organization involved in these efforts readily admit the technology is at least ten years out. NYU Wireless luminary Ted Rappaport, who drove an effort at the Federal Communications Commission to open experimental licenses for 6G in stratospheric spectrum between 95 GHz and 3 THz, told SDxCentral he expects mobile communications systems and devices to be operating above the 95 GHz within a decade. 

While 6G remains a conceptual framework, there are many examples of 5G falling short of its promise with respect to performance, ubiquitous coverage, and use cases, according to Hays. “Deployments of fully-capable 5G networks in rural areas are nowhere to be seen, and the fully virtualized capabilities of standalone 5G networks are largely absent from most,” he said. 

“6G may well be the communications industry’s opportunity to close these gaps, even if it comes a decade later than expected," he said.