Who "Needs" 6G to be Revolutiionary?

By about 2030, standards bodies and suppliers will have gotten quite a ways down the road of preparing the next generation of mobile networks to succeed 5G. There will be claims about how “revolutionary” it might be, as we heard about 3G, 4G and 5G before. 

So "who" in the value chain gets most "value" from such claims about "revolutionary new features?" Consumers, app suppliers and users perhaps will benefit, but incrementally, in the form of higher speeds and lower latency.

Infrastructure suppliers and service providers, on the other hand, "need" to make such claims. Without dramatic new features, it is hard for infra suppliers to sell new networks. Without the promise of important new features, service providers will have a hard time convincing regulators to grant spectrum to build the new networks.

In other words, 6G will largely be "nice to have" for consumers and app providers. The promise of 6G progress will be "must have" if the networks are to be built.

There will be requirements for additional spectrum, as always has been the case when a mobile next-generation network has launched. The issue is how much new spectrum might be required. 

And even if the general rule is that users consume more data, and therefore use more bandwidth, over time, there are some questions about the degree to which mobile operators will need to spend heavily on new spectrum, though governments who make money selling spectrum will prefer higher amounts and costlier prices. 

Mobile service providers obviously will want to limit their investment in new spectrum resources. Keep in mind that they have other avenues for doing so. They can create smaller cells; they can use more-efficient radios and network elements; better air interfaces and reclaim spectrum supporting older networks that are decommissioned (2G and 3G being the best examples at the moment). 

But offloading demand to fixed networks has become a huge tool as well. 

Wi-Fi handles 70 percent to 80 percent of total smartphone data consumption, with the exact figure varying by region. Wi-Fi data consumption in the United States is about  85 percent to 90 percent, for example, while lower in emerging markets (around 50 percent to 70 percent), according to estimates fromCisco, Ericsson, and OpenSignal, for example. 

Year	Wi-Fi Data Consumption (EB/month)	Mobile Network Data Consumption (EB/month)	Percentage on Wi-Fi
2024	383	164	70%
2025	460	197	70%

Beyond the Wi-Fi role, technologists and operators have gotten better at using older platforms to ease the transition to a next generation of networks, even if that means not all the touted features are available. Network slicing on 5G networks requires “standalone” platforms that in many cases are lightly deployed at the moment, for example. 

On the other hand, the faster speeds and higher bandwidth, plus lower latency of every next-generation network already is producing commercial revenue in significant amounts, such as using 5G platforms to support fixed wireless for home broadband. 

That might not be among the futuristic capabilities 5G was supposed to provide, but it has created new revenue and product possibilities. 

So perhaps some skepticism about the market “need” for 6G, and the resources needed to support it, are reasonable. Already, 6G is touted as supporting a new array of sensory information such as touch, taste and smell. 

Some of us would be that if such innovations actually arrive, it will be about the time 7G arrives, as that has been the pattern for past next-generation network innovations as well: the promised futuristic apps need twice as long to reach commercial success as predicted. 

So promised 3G innovations don’t arrive until 4G; 4G innovations don’t arrive until 5G. That isn’t to deny the practical advantages for each next-generation network: more capacity and lower latency. 

But those improvements are akin to the need fixed network operators have to upgrade copper access to optical fiber; satellite providers to upgrade from geostationary platforms to low-earth-orbit constellations, all of which support higher capacity networks. 

Mobile networks will need to continue to evolve to support higher speeds. The “revolutionary new applications and use cases”  might ultimately be less important. 

Do We "Need" 6G? Yes and No

By about 2030, standards bodies and suppliers will have gotten quite a ways down the road of preparing the next generation of mobile networks to succeed 5G. There will be claims about how “revolutionary” it might be, as we heard about 3G, 4G and 5G before. 

There will be requirements for additional spectrum, as always has been the case when a mobile next-generation network has launched. The issue is how much new spectrum might be required. 

And even if the general rule is that users consume more data, and therefore use more bandwidth, over time, there are some questions about the degree to which mobile operators will need to spend heavily on new spectrum, though governments who make money selling spectrum will prefer higher amounts and costlier prices. 

Mobile service providers obviously will want to limit their investment in new spectrum resources. Keep in mind that they have other avenues for doing so. They can create smaller cells; they can use more-efficient radios and network elements; better air interfaces and reclaim spectrum supporting older networks that are decommissioned (2G and 3G being the best examples at the moment). 

But offloading demand to fixed networks has become a huge tool as well. 

Wi-Fi handles 70 percent to 80 percent of total smartphone data consumption, with the exact figure varying by region. Wi-Fi data consumption in the United States is about  85 percent to 90 percent, for example, while lower in emerging markets (around 50 percent to 70 percent), according to estimates fromCisco, Ericsson, and OpenSignal, for example. 

Year	Wi-Fi Data Consumption (EB/month)	Mobile Network Data Consumption (EB/month)	Percentage on Wi-Fi
2024	383	164	70%
2025	460	197	70%

Beyond the Wi-Fi role, technologists and operators have gotten better at using older platforms to ease the transition to a next generation of networks, even if that means not all the touted features are available. Network slicing on 5G networks requires “standalone” platforms that in many cases are lightly deployed at the moment, for example. 

On the other hand, the faster speeds and higher bandwidth, plus lower latency of every next-generation network already is producing commercial revenue in significant amounts, such as using 5G platforms to support fixed wireless for home broadband. 

That might not be among the futuristic capabilities 5G was supposed to provide, but it has created new revenue and product possibilities. 

So perhaps some skepticism about the market “need” for 6G, and the resources needed to support it, are reasonable. Already, 6G is touted as supporting a new array of sensory information such as touch, taste and smell. 

Some of us would be that if such innovations actually arrive, it will be about the time 7G arrives, as that has been the pattern for past next-generation network innovations as well: the promised futuristic apps need twice as long to reach commercial success as predicted. 

So promised 3G innovations don’t arrive until 4G; 4G innovations don’t arrive until 5G. That isn’t to deny the practical advantages for each next-generation network: more capacity and lower latency. 

But those improvements are akin to the need fixed network operators have to upgrade copper access to optical fiber; satellite providers to upgrade from geostationary platforms to low-earth-orbit constellations, all of which support higher capacity networks. 

Mobile networks will need to continue to evolve to support higher speeds. The “revolutionary new applications and use cases”  might ultimately be less important.

AI Boosts "Data Center to Data Center" Traffic, Not Home Broadband Needs

Current evidence and expert opinion suggests AI use is unlikely to dramatically increase home broadband data consumption in the near term, while driving new needs for bandwidth between data centers. While that might change in the future if new bandwidth-intensive applications develop, for the moment the impact of AI processing seems focused on "data center to data center" capacity.

For starters, AI query traffic Is comparable to that of search engine use. When consumers interact with AI (asking questions to an AI chatbot), the data exchanged is typically limited to short text queries and responses. That is similar in scale to current web searches, meaning the volume of data transferred to and from homes is not substantially greater than existing activities like Google searches.

In some ways, AI chatbots might also reduce some amount of web browsing,  if users rely on AI to summarize information instead of visiting multiple websites.

To the extent there is more processing, that happens within data centers, not across the access network.

Source/Study	Year	Key Findings on Home Data Consumption	Notes on Scope/Methodology
CircleID / POTs and PANs	2024	AI queries use similar bandwidth to search engines; may even reduce home data use by condensing information	Industry analysis, references Scientific American for energy use, not data volume 12
Dell’Oro Group	2023	AI’s main impact is network optimization, not increased home data use; future metaverse/AI combo could drive growth	Industry report, focuses on network-level effects 4
Fiber Broadband Association / Futurum Group	2024	AI is driving fiber deployment and network investment, but impact on household data volumes not specified	Industry survey, focus on infrastructure 3
BroadbandProviders UK	2024	AI can optimize home network usage and plans, improving efficiency rather than increasing consumption	Consumer-facing analysis, focus on network management 5

On the other hand, AI processing operations are very likely to increase the need for additional bandwidth between data centers. 

AI workloads, especially model training and large-scale inference, require the movement of massive datasets between data centers, cloud regions, and enterprise sites (sources: 1,3,4,6,7), so orders for fiber capacity have increased by an order of magnitude, with standard requests jumping from 8 to 12 fibers to 144 to 432 fibers per route in recent years, some analysts say. .

Traditional static wavelength provisioning also might be inadequate for AI’s dynamic and often bursty traffic patterns. AI training and inference workloads may require large-scale but temporary bandwidth, some argue.

Impact Area	Evidence or Argument	Source(s)
Bandwidth Demand	Orders for fiber have increased 10-50x; AI-driven data centers need petabit-scale data transfer	1,3,4,6,7
Latency & Symmetry	AI requires ultra-low latency, symmetrical speeds for real-time inference and distributed training	1,4,7
Network Agility	Shift from static to dynamic, automated provisioning; need for temporary, large-scale bandwidth	2
Data Center Placement	New builds in power-rich regions, requiring new long-haul and middle-mile routes	4,6,8
Bottleneck Risk	Insufficient fiber could cause congestion, limiting AI growth	4,7

Unlike traditional north-south (server to end user) traffic, AI data centers prioritize server-to-server (east-west) communication for parallel processing, requiring 2–4x more fiber density than traditional hyperscale facilities, observers note.

The bottom line is that additional bandwidth demand will be focused on “data center to data center”` portions of the network, not the access network.

Asking the Wrong Question about 5G

The claim  that "5G has failed” is in some ways an odd one. On one hand, critics tend to cite the unfulfilled promises of exciting new use cases. On the other hand, critics tend not to focus on the lower latency, faster speeds or energy efficiency that each successive network also is founded upon. 

But that might be the main point: each successive mobile generation has been successful and necessary precisely for the reasons that consumer home broadband experiences have been based on ever-increasing bandwidth, capacity and access speeds. 

So alter the question just a bit to understand the real impact. Do you ever really hear observers arguing that mobility services (mobile phone service) actually have failed? One does not hear such claims because mobile service clearly has been a raging global success. 

Some 71 percent of humans presently use a mobile phone, according to the GSMA.  

source: World Economic Forum 

So “mobility” has clearly succeeded, even if some feel particular mobile platforms have not. To be sure, proponents have touted the creation of platforms for futuristic use cases (the network will support them), not the extent of usage. Some examples can always be cited, though often not mass market adoption. 

To be sure,  every mobile generation since 3G has made such claims. And we might advance some very-practical reasons for the claims. Each mobile generation requires the allocation of additional spectrum from governments, which have to be convinced to do so.

Pointing out the new potential applications; the contribution to economic growth; educational advantages and so forth are part of the effort to secure the new spectrum. 

Also, infrastructure suppliers have a vested interest in enticing operators to create whole new networks precisely because it might be possible to create new revenue streams, or provide

Still, each successive mobile platform has promised, and delivered, latency improvements of about 10 times over the preceding generation, as well as potential bandwidth (internet access speeds) of 10 times more, and typically also energy consumption efficiencies as well. 

The practical improvements always vary from laboratory tests, though. The actual behavior of all radio waves in real-world environments is an issue. So are the realities of impediments to signal propagation (walls, trees, other obstacles) and signal interference.

Cell geometry also matters. Higher bandwidth is possible when smaller cells are used. 

Higher bandwidth is possible when channel sizes are increased (as when channels are bonded together to create a single wider channel from two or more narrower channels). 

And real-world “customer-experienced speeds” also are dependent on which actual frequencies are used widely by each mobile generation. Lower frequencies propagate better, but higher frequencies support higher speeds, all other things being equal. 

Still, the point is that observers never question the “success” of the mobile phone and mobile networks, only the “failure” of futuristic apps to emerge. 

That is not the point. The primary and essential value of each successive mobile platform comes from network performance (lower latency, higher bandwidth) and not the possible new apps, which cannot be created by mobile operators in any case, anymore than internet service providers having created Facebook. Google, Amazon, YouTube or Uber. 

Mobile operators can only create the physical infrastructure third parties can use to create new use cases. And that has been accomplished. But then innovation leading to new apps rests in the hands of entrepreneurs and investors.  

That’s the whole implication of “permissionless innovation” the internet is based upon: innovators do not have to own networks to build apps that use the networks. The entities that own the access or transport networks do not necessarily or primarily create and own the apps. 

Oddly, the reverse tends to be the case: highly-successful consumer app providers find they can vertically integrate into core network transport as a means of lowering their costs. That is why most of the world’s long distance networks (subsea, especially) are built and owned by a relative handful of big app providers such as Alphabet (Google) and Meta. 

It is fair to note that few of the futuristic apps touted for 3G, 4G or 5G networks have become mass market realities. On the other hand, lots of highly-useful apps not envisioned for any of those networks have emerged.

Net	Predicted "Futuristic" Use Cases	Unexpected "Everyday" App Developments
3G	Video conferencing, mobile TV, advanced multimedia	Mobile social media (early stages), basic GPS navigation, early app stores
4G	Immersive VR/AR, high-definition mobile gaming, remote surgery	Ride-sharing apps (Uber, Lyft), widespread video streaming (YouTube, Netflix), robust social media (Instagram, TikTok), advanced turn-by-turn navigation (Google Maps)
5G	Holographic communication, tactile internet, massive IoT deployments	Enhanced real-time location based services, very high definition mobile video streaming, cloud gaming, very reliable real time social media interactions. Increased use of live streaming services, and the further enhancement of cloud based applications.

All of which suggests we are very bad at predicting the future; innovations often emerge unexpectedly and only when users see the value. 

Consider only the industrial, commercial, medical and other applications generally centered around the use of sensors and mobile networks as the connectivity mechanism. Most have not taken off in a significant way, even if there are some instances of viable and routine deployment. 

Generation	Touted Possible New Applications
3G	- Telematics for automotive industry5
	- Smart home devices (thermostats, security cameras)1
	- Traffic light systems1
	- Vending machines with remote monitoring1
	- GPS trackers for livestock1
	- Wearable devices and e-readers1
	- Medical alert devices1
	- Remote weather stations1
4G	- Enhanced mobile broadband for video streaming and gaming6
	- Smart home applications2
	- Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity2
	- Remote monitoring systems2
	- Vehicle communications (real-time road information, navigation)2
	- VoIP calls and video conferencing6
	- Mobile payments6
5G	- Telesurgery and remote medical procedures4
	- Fully autonomous vehicles4
	- Advanced connected homes4
	- Portable Virtual Reality (VR) experiences4
	- Smart city infrastructure4
	- Ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC)3
	- Massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC)3
	- Industrial automation and robotics8
	- Remote patient monitoring in healthcare7
	- Large-scale IoT deployments in agriculture, utilities, and logistics

For the most part, the futuristic appl;ications have not developed as expected, and when they do take hold, it often is in the subsequent generation.

Many expected 3G to produce mass market usage of videoconferencing. That did happen, but only in the 4G era, with social media and other multimedia messaging apps, for example. That is a fairly common pattern: we overestimate routine adoption by at least a decade. 

Use Case Prediction	Actual Adoption (at least early stage)	Delayed Applications Likely Emerging in Later Generations
3G Expectations (Medical devices, telematics, mobile TV)1	4G Realizations (IoT connectivity, smart meters, vehicle telematics)2	4G Concepts for 5G Era - Advanced industrial automation3 - Mobile medical monitoring systems3 - Smart grid controls3 - HD public safety cameras3
4G Expectations (Massive IoT, Industry 4.0)2	5G Realizations (Network slicing, enhanced mobile broadband)4	5G Concepts for 6G Era - Holographic communications5 - Autonomous vehicle networks57 - Network-as-sensor technology5 - Microsecond-latency telesurgery7
5G Expectations (URLLC, mMTC)34	6G Projections - 1,000x faster latency than 5G7 - AI-optimized networks5 - Energy-efficient massive IoT6	6G Horizon - Real-time digital twins5 - Military-grade AR simulations5 - Advanced environmental sensing5 - 8K holographic streaming

The point is that mobile services and smartphone services have proven wildly successful. In fact, nobody doubts that. What often gets criticized are the many futuristic apps that could be developed with each next-generation mobile network.

That misses the point. As fixed network home broadband has to continually extend internet access speeds and bandwidth, so too do mobile networks. The bottom line is that each successive mobile generation succeeds to the extent it does so.