5G is so passé

The race to build 6G is on—or, at least, the race to start selling the idea to Washington. 5G  is still being rolled out, and is still only used by about a tenth of mobile phone users around the world (U.S. figures are comparable). It will take years for 5G to come into more widespread use. But it also takes a long time to negotiate what techniques will be implemented in standards, so telecommunications industry types are already looking to the next generation: 6G. The contours of 6G already matter, if not to consumers, to the companies that intend to build out the network. Patents that are deemed “standards-essential” can be worth millions (if not billions) to the companies involved, and standards also have substantial “soft power” as they are deployed around the world. The Next G Alliance, a year-and-a-half-old group involving large companies like Apple, AT&T, Google and Intel is trying to get Washington thinking about its needs early. In a new report, the group attempts to lay out what technologies will need 6G in order to work well, so that engineers can work backwards to figure out what capabilities to design into the standards.