Having Learned Nothing From The 5G Hype Cycle, The 6G Hype Cycle Begins In Earnest

Fifth-generation wireless (5G) was supposed to change the world. According to wireless carriers and gear makers, not only was it supposed to bring about the “fourth industrial revolution,” it was supposed to usher forth amazing new smart cities and help with cancer treatment. Wireless giants routinely portrayed a world full of 5G powered robots giving tattoos or engaging in remote bananna surgery (?).

In the real world, 5G landed with a dud. While it does offer faster and lower latency connections, it was always more of a modest evolution than a revolution. And U.S. telecom being what it is (highly consolidated, barely competitive, poorly and inconsistently regulated), most U.S. 5G service wound up being slower and significantly more expensive than most European variants.

Now the wireless industry is starting to develop the 6G standard. 6G, like 5G before it, should improve network performance and speed, integrating some interesting network automation technologies while pushing into lesser used segment of spectrum. It will be less about developing new hardware transmission technologies, and more about interoperation and integrating new automation tech.

It hasn’t been clear that the wireless sector learned absolutely anything to the backlash to 5G hype. Ericsson, for example, has proclaimed 6G will create an “Internet of the senses” allowing consumers to “digitally transport themselves” all over the world. Samsung insists 6G will create “hyper connected AI experiences,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

With 5G investment pretty much crashing, you can tell that at least some people in the wireless sector have toned the bullshit down a little bit, with even AT&T executives mirroring my language about these standards being evolutionary, not revolutionary. Still, it’s pretty common to see wireless executives claiming that 6G will deliver things like “indoor service robots” and “extended reality experiences”:

“Young said 6G might support a variety of new applications and services, including indoor service robots, extended reality experiences, and digital twins for hazardous environments.”

Corporate speak is inherently meaningless, but there’s something about these untethered predictions that are always particularly amusing. Not just because these inventions often aren’t real; but because they don’t need 6G to exist in the first place. Most of the innovative use cases portrayed by industry in 5G and 6G would function equally well over a gigabit Wi-Fi connection.

Cancer treatments in hospitals probably aren’t going to even use cellular. There’s no reason a remote tattoo artist can’t use an ordinary Ethernet port. There’s an amusing facts-optional hand wavy desperation in the rhetoric I always find highly entertaining.

Here in reality, over-hyping comes with a cost. By over-promising on what this kind of tech is capable of, they wind up associating the terminology in the minds of consumers not with innovation and utility, but with mindless hype.

Another problem is that consumers don’t really want to spend more money for 5G. U.S. wireless data is already some of the most expensive in the developed world thanks to industry consolidation. Every single consumer survey reveals that the thing U.S. consumers want the most are lower prices.

Efforts to charge even more for 5G haven’t gone well. Verizon had to back off plans to charge $10 extra for 5G after nobody wanted to pay. AT&T’s currently trying to charge people $7 extra for “turbo 5G,” which I suspect will fare roughly the same.

Given U.S. wireless competitive, consolidation, and regulatory capture issues, the “race to 5G” was always more of a waddle to nowhere. It’s also a race we didn’t really win by any meaningful metric, with everybody from France to China offering broader 5G coverage for significantly less money. That’s not really something the dutifully patriotic U.S. tech press usually wants to discuss.

I’d like to hope that the 6G hype cycle isn’t quite as bad as the 5G hype cycle. But most of the financial incentives lean toward over-stating the technologies capabilities in press and policy. More reliable, faster networks aren’t sexy and don’t grab headlines. So I suspect “AI” hype and 6G hype will fuse and morph in entirely new ways that, at the very least, will be amusing in their absurdity.